Course description
This course is primarily delivered live online, with students coming to Cranfield School of Management four times a year for a full day.
The Senior Investment and Commercial Banking Professional Apprenticeship provides a unique opportunity for you to gain an advanced-level understanding of a wide range of management functions and to develop specialist knowledge in banking, economics, finance, and sustainable development goals relevant to the financial services sector.
This programme will provide you with the foundations of the various dimensions of retail banking and several aspects of general management, such as analysis of the economic environment, financial management, organisational management, strategic marketing, and business strategy and aims to improve your critical awareness of management and organisations.
In addition, the work-based project allows you to tackle a substantial task within your organisation under the guidance of academic supervisors. Through responsible practical application, it will also enable you to advance your knowledge and skills so you can contribute towards a more sustainable retail banking industry and perform effectively and efficiently in the highly competitive and fast-changing retail and digital banking sector, which is also challenged to become more sustainable.
Drawing on faculty from across Cranfield School of Management, the programme is led by Cranfield’s Economics and Banking Group, which has been consistently ranked UK top 10 in the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking for its teaching of economics in relation to our full-time MBA programme.
Additionally, this programme provides employer organisations the ability to sponsor multiple high potential employees. It will be particularly attractive to financial institutions that want to use their apprenticeship levy to develop their early career employees in retail banking.
Upcoming start dates
Suitability - Who should attend?
Who is it for?
- Self-motivated individuals with technical backgrounds (e.g. IT, mathematics, etc.) who wish to gain a good knowledge of finance, management and retail banking.
- Experienced professionals with a background in finance, who wish to have a detailed understanding of the link between finance, management and technology in financial services.
Training Course Content
This MSc course comprises of 12 intensive taught modules and an in-company project. The course is primarily delivered online for flexibility and to enable diverse participation. You will have the equivalent of 14 days blended learning delivered across each year. This is primarily online and synchronous, with four days face-to-face contact providing the opportunity to network with your cohort, academics, and industry representatives.
The modules are delivered live online from the Grenville Studio at Cranfield. The sessions are scheduled for alternate Mondays from 09:00-13:00 with industry experts joining the online sessions to facilitate discussions.
During your course you will undertake various projects including individual essays, group projects, simulations, and an in-company project. You will be expected to present your findings to academics and senior managers from the organisation involved.
Tutorial support is provided throughout the course, including regular meetings with a personal tutor and module leaders. Extensive use is made of Canvas (a Virtual Learning Environment) as a means of delivering material to support and augment classroom learning.
Upon completion of the programme, you will be ready to advance your career within the retail and digital banking sector and contribute to the enhancement of your organisation's sustainable performance.
The aims of this course are:
- To prepare students to tackle the world towards a more sustainable retail and digital banking, partly through a strong balanced focus between theoretical perspectives and application. The learning objectives are based on those set out in the Senior Investment/Commercial Banking Professional apprenticeship standard and will be applied in practice during simulations, case study discussions, role plays within the taught part and in the workplace-based project.
- To advance the study of retail and digital banking, the analysis of a changing external context with complex sustainability challenges in which retail banks operate as well as the general management of banks.
- To develop a range of business knowledge and skills, including ethical behaviour and a sustainability mindset in students’ approach to business, together with self-awareness and personal development appropriate for career progression.
- To apply concepts and theories to complex management issues both systematically and creatively, in order to advance the effectiveness and competitiveness of the employing organisation in tandem with the improvement of the environmental, social and governance performance of their organisations.
- Enhancement of lifelong learning through the development of transferable intellectual and study skills, personal development to enable self-direction and creativity, in order to contribute to a symbiotic ecosystem involving business, the economy, society and the natural environment.
Course delivery details
Why this course?
- Develop specialist knowledge in economics, finance, and sustainable development goals relevant to the financial services sector.
- The programme will improve your critical awareness of management and organisations, and enhance your skills to successfully address financial and management challenges within your organisation.
- A workplace-based project provides the opportunity for you to tackle a substantial product management task within your organisation, under the guidance of academic supervisors.
- You will benefit from a combination of online and face-to-face teaching, providing you with the flexibility to work around existing commitments.
- Not only will this MSc broaden and deepen your professional network, you'll also join Cranfield’s active alumni network of 75,000 managers and leaders across the globe.
- This MSc incorporates the School of Management’s experiences and learning from our UK top 10 ranked Master’s in Finance and Management: QS World University Rankings: Masters in Finance ranking 2022 and our Management MSc ranked UK top 10 in the Financial Times: Masters in Management 2021 ranking.
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Cranfield University
Cranfield is a specialist postgraduate university that is a global leader for education and transformational research in technology and management. We have many world-class, large-scale facilities, including our own global research airport, which offers a unique environment for transformational education...