Master of Science in Banking and Finance

The MSc in Banking and Finance is a high-quality master’s course with both a strong practical and academic orientation. It prepares you for a successful career working for banks, FinTechs, funds, wealth managers, consulting companies, or in the finance departments of many industries.

Why choose the Master of Science in Banking and Finance?

• Personal atmosphere: We teach in small groups and have an excellent student-faculty ratio.
• Cutting-edge and well connected: The Institute of Financial Services at the Lucerne School of Business is the leading research institute in Banking and Finance among Switzerland's universities of applied sciences and arts. The content of the master's programme in Banking and Finance is cutting-edge, due to our own research and publication activities.
• Second degree options: We offer a "second degree programme" with Edinburgh Napier University and Lingnan University in Hong Kong, which means that you can obtain two master degrees at the same time.
• Location: Our new campus can be reached from Zurich in 35 minutes and from Lucerne in 15 minutes. While Zurich is an international financial center, Lucerne is a national hub for the insurance sector and one of the major regions for tourism in Switzerland. The Canton of Zug is a renowned and important location for commodity trading, private equity, home to many international companies, and has a strong industrial sector. Moreover, the region has attracted many blockchain companies and is known as “crypto valley”.
• CFA affiliation: Our MSc programme incoprorates a substantial part of the CFA Program Candidate Body of Knowledge (CBOK), which underlines both the practical and theoretical focus of our programme.

What you will learn

• The programme consists of the following modules:
• Trends and Innovations in Banking (FinTech, Data Analytics, Blockchain)
• Macroeconomics and Financial Markets
• Risk Management (Credit Risk, Market Risk, Risk Management in Banking)
• Corporate Finance (Electives: Advanced Corporate Finance, Family Business Finance, Corporate Financial Management, Mergers and Acquisitions, Real Estate Investment Banking)
• Leadership and Ethics
• Investments (Electives: Behavioural Finance, Fixed Income, Equities, Sustainable Investments, Agent-Based Modelling of Financial Markets)
• Alternative Investments (Electives: Hedge Funds, Private Equity, Commodities, Crowd and Crypto-Based Markets, ABS & ILS, Real Estate)
• Bank Management
• Quantitative Methods (Econometrics, VBA programming, use of statistical softwares such as SPSS and R)

Our graduates

Our graduates work in the following areas: Banking, financial services companies, FinTechs, private equity, mergers & acquisitions, investment funds, pension funds, asset management providers, consulting, auditing, finance departments of companies across all sectors.

Facts and Figures

• The average age of our students is 27.
• 80% of our students work part-time during their studies.
• 95% of our students are employed within one year after graduation.
• The average salary of our graduates six months after graduation is CHF 102,017
• 33% of our graduates hold a management position six months after graduation.

Financial Times Ranking

The programme is ranked as one of the world's 55 best finance study programmes by the Financial Times (2022).

CFA Affiliation

The Master’s programme is part of the CFA Institute’s University Affiliation Program and thus prepares students for potential Chartered Financial Analysts® Program exams. Our MSc in Banking and Finance has been acknowledged as incorporating at least 70 percent of the CFA Program Candidate Body of Knowledge (CBOK) and we are eligible to award a number of CFA scholarships each year.

Accreditations – AACSB accredited

The Lucerne School of Business is AACSB accredited. Only the top 6% of all business schools worldwide hold this prestigious accreditation. The university is also accredited by the Swiss Accreditation Council.

The Lucerne School of Business further offers Management Programs