Accounting and Business Management BA Honours

Course summary

This degree is designed to equip you with a unique set of accounting and managerial skills to analyse and evaluate company and industry trends. You’ll learn how to receive, interpret and communicate financial and other information in a globalised profession. Gaining a deeper understanding of how finances affect company performance, you’ll be better placed to help firms make effective business decisions. Upon completion of the degree, students will be eligible to apply for eight CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) exemptions and up to six ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants).

In this fast-changing business world, there is a shortage of graduate talent with both accounting and business management education and skills. Our course covers management accounting, business and management education, and financial strategy. Generating value for the organisations you work in, you’ll look to the future, analysing the performance of business, advising or creating strategies to solve problems, adapt to changing circumstances and market conditions.

Taught by academics with professional experience as accountants and managers, there is an emphasis on learning through practice, so you graduate with the breadth of knowledge and capabilities to respond proactively and creatively to contemporary business issues and challenges. Throughout the course, you’ll also develop a range of transferrable skills highly prized by employers, such as critical evaluation, self-direction and problem-solving, as well as a sound grasp of analysis, presentations and negotiation techniques.

In December 2021, the University of Westminster received the CIMA Prize-Winner Excellence Award 2021. The Prize-Winner Award recognises university partners with top-performing CIMA students in Case Study exams. The CIMA Excellence Awards celebrate outstanding academic partners, education providers and students who have made significant contributions to the accounting profession and the Institute over the past year.

Top reasons to study with us

• Accredited by CIMA with eight examination exemptions on successful completion and up to six ACCA exemptions depending on your choice of modules
• Large range of optional modules covering specialist topics such as taxation or commercial law, as well as generalist activities like creating and managing an online presence
• Programmes are delivered by a multicultural and international teaching body, who come from professional practice and/or regularly publish in top international journals
• Optional placement year and study abroad semester to gain valuable work experience
• Opportunity to undertake an internship, which has enabled previous students to gain experience with the NHS and with Disney
• Participate in Westminster Working Cultures trips to understand working cultures within businesses abroad, which in the past have included Berlin, Mumbai and Washington DC
• Business School graduates have gone on to work for large banks, including Standard Chartered, Citibank, Société Générale and Paribas, and governmental agencies, such as the World Economic Forum and Taiwanese government

This degree is designed to prepare you for a financial management and management accounting roles across all sectors of business, anywhere in the world. You will become a confident analyst and advisor, learning to interpret cost or profit figures produced by an accountant to support managerial decision making. You will graduate with knowledge and professional skills, and a heightened sense of commercial awareness that will be immediately transferable in a business environment. You could enter a wide range of business careers such as banking, insurance, financial services and general management. Many of our students go on to postgraduate study here and at a range of other universities.

The University's Careers and Employability Service has built up a network of over 3,000 employers around the world, helping all our students explore and connect with exciting opportunities and careers.

This course will prepare you for roles such as:

• Analyst or researcher
• Business development manager
• Business partner
• Business sales executive
• Financial advisor
• Management accountant
• Management consultant

Graduate employers

Graduates from this course have found employment at organisations including:

• Bank of England
• Barclays
• British Academy of Film and Television Arts
• BT
• Coca Cola
• EE
• HSBC
• NHS
• PricewaterhouseCoopers
• Transport for London