Quant Guide 2020: City, University of London

Bayes Business School (formerly Cass Business School), London, UK

 

Dirk Nitzsche may be the busiest man in quant academia. A senior lecturer in finance at City’s Cass Business School, he runs not just one, but three, quantitative finance graduate programmes – the Quantitative Finance MSc, Financial Mathematics MSc, and Mathematical Trading and Finance MSc. Last year’s intake numbered 72 students across all three programmes, 65 of whom were international.

All three programmes are similarly structured and take 12 months to complete on a full-time basis. Before getting started with classes, new students take part in a two-week induction, during which they complete refresher courses and attend a careers fair. The first term is also identical across all three MScs. All students take five modules: asset pricing, derivatives, foundations of econometrics, stochastic modelling methods in finance and applied research tools.

The programmes vary from the second term onwards. All three require students to complete classes in fixed income and risk analysis plus two programme-specific classes. For the Mathematical Trading and Finance MSc, this means quantitative trading and machine learning; for the Financial Mathematics MSc, it’s advanced stochastic modelling and simulations and techniques in financial modelling; and for the Quantitative Finance MSc, it’s econometrics of financial markets and numerical methods.

In the third term, students of all three programmes are presented with a range of choices. They can opt for five specialist electives, a 10,000-word business research project plus one elective, or a shorter applied research project of 3,000–5,000 words plus three electives.

There is some overlap within the elective pools for each programme, but many are unique to the individual degree. The Quantitative Finance MSc, for example, has a module on Islamic banking, finance and insurance that isn’t available to students of the other programmes. Similarly, the Financial Mathematics MSc is alone in offering classes in copula modelling. The Mathematical Trading MSc has a class in advanced financial modelling and forecasting that doesn’t appear elsewhere.

Students of all three programmes can choose an international elective as one of their options – an introduction to fintech class, which is taught in Italy, according to the programme’s web listing.

View this institution’s entry in the 2019 guide

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Please note: Cass Business School was renamed Bayes Business School in 2021.