Financial Mathematics with a Professional Placement Year (BSc)

Why study this course

This four-year programme features an employability-enhancing paid placement at an organisation of your choice, providing the ideal preparation for a career in finance.

To manage the complex financial sector, banks and financial institutions need talented mathematicians who are fluent in the language of finance.

This course will provide you with a solid foundation in mathematics, whilst also developing knowledge and skills that are essential for jobs in the finance industry, including an understanding of modern financial markets, institutions, investments and policies. You will focus on issues and topics relevant to the computational and market design side of contemporary finance, such as:

• Complex Systems
• Trading (in particular high-frequency trading)
• Fund Management
• Analytics

This four-year version of the degree includes a year of paid work in a mathematician and/or statistician role during year three. You will return to Cardiff following the successful completion of your work placement at the start of the autumn semester ready for your final year of studies.

In a competitive graduate job market, a placement can help you gain extra skills and experience to make you stand out from the crowd. It could help you secure a permanent role after you graduate, as well as providing real-world context to support your studies. If you're not sure what career path to follow, it's a great opportunity to explore your options and might even help you make those all-important decisions about your future.

Our students have completed exciting placements at organisations including HM Revenue & Customs, the Ministry of Defence, Nationwide, BAE Systems and Lloyds Bank.

Accreditations

• Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA)

Careers and placements

Career prospects

You can use your BSc in Financial Mathematics with a Professional Placement Year as a pathway to the workforce where you may meet our alumni working in finance, government, marketing or even agriculture. Or, you might choose to widen your career options to include a range of related fields by completing postgraduate studies in mathematics, the sciences, computing or engineering.

Maths Careers Support

In the Spring semester of your first year, there are a range of masterclasses available to you to help support your future career prospects. The classes cover work experience, CV and covering letters, application forms, interview techniques, and an introduction to LinkedIn.

We have a regularly-updated student jobs board featuring a range of volunteering, internship, placement, and graduate opportunities. Plus, we organise a full programme of student and employer presentations every year with employers, such as Lloyds Banking Group, HSBC, PwC, Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, Sainsburys, Network Rail, GSK, Office of National Statistics, Welsh Government, the MOD, Welsh Water, and the Met Office.

The School of Mathematics also has a Careers Management Skills Programme, presentations by students returning from industry and a range of sponsored prizes awarded for academic achievement.

Placements

The option of spending year three in industry extends the BSc degree to four years. If you decide not to do a placement abroad, you will have two options.  You can change to a three year BSc Mathematics programme, or a degree programme that includes a Year Abroad.  A year of studying abroad will keep the duration of your BSc degree at four years.  This option will be dependent on your academic performance and when you decide to change programmes.