Accounting and Finance

Accounting and finance is a combination that prepares you for the core professional disciplines that underpin financial management in organisations of every kind. Accounting is concerned with recording, reporting, and analysing financial information: preparing financial statements, managing costs, conducting audits, and ensuring regulatory compliance. Finance extends into investment analysis, financial markets, risk management, and corporate financial strategy, asking how organisations should manage capital and make decisions under uncertainty.

Together, they give you a comprehensive and practically relevant understanding of how organisations manage money and communicate financial performance.

At the University of Chester, this programme is offered as Accounting and Finance with a Professional Placement Year, extending the degree to four years of full-time study. The placement year provides extended work experience in an accounting or finance environment, giving you the opportunity to apply your academic learning in a professional context and develop the skills, judgment, and professional contacts that employers value. The degree also includes a year abroad, providing international study experience alongside the professional placement.

You will study financial reporting, management accounting, taxation, corporate finance, auditing, investment and portfolio management, and the regulatory and ethical framework governing the accounting profession. Chester's accounting and finance programmes have strong connections with professional accounting bodies, and the degree may provide exemptions from some professional examination requirements.

Graduates in accounting and finance go on to careers in public practice with accountancy firms, in-house finance functions across all sectors, banking, financial analysis, management consultancy, and public sector finance. Many go on to complete chartered accountancy qualifications with bodies such as the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants or the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. The combination of professional placement experience and international study gives graduates a competitive profile in a jobs market where both professional grounding and international awareness are valued.