MSc Financial Crime and Compliance in Digital Societies (top-up)

Program Overview

This top-up MSc in Financial Crime and Compliance equips professionals with the skills to navigate emerging digital governance, compliance, and financial crime risks. Through a blended learning approach, participants gain advanced insights into digital technologies, data analysis, and evidence-based research to enhance their organizations' resilience and contribute to strategic decision-making. The program, developed in partnership with the International Compliance Association, provides a stepping stone for PhD study and fosters collaboration with industry professionals.

Program Outline

MSc Financial Crime and Compliance in Digital Societies (top-up) - Detailed Extraction

Degree Overview:

This MSc is designed for professionals with senior management functions in business with strategic and decision-making responsibilities for GRC and financial crime risks. This is an executive top-up course, so you’ll need an ICA Postgraduate Diploma in Governance Risk and Compliance or Financial Crime Compliance, and ideally have at least 10 years’ of experience in practice.

Objectives:

• Gain the digital edge in combating evolving governance, compliance, and financial crime risks in the digital space.
• Close digital vulnerabilities and enhance digital security and trust.
• Build on existing GRC and financial crime prevention expertise with the latest global standards.
• Sharpen tools and open new opportunities professionally.
• Contribute to the enhancement of business organizations by informing corporate strategies, policies, and decisions in relation to governance, compliance, and financial crime risks.

Description:

This blended, top-up MSc was developed with the ICA, ensuring you'll build on your governance, risk and compliance (GRC) and financial crime prevention expertise with the latest global standards. The course is delivered flexibly online, allowing you to seamlessly integrate your learning into your life and work schedule. With three practical masterclasses per year, you’ll have the opportunity to make professional connections and get involved in interactive workshops to deliver governance and compliance best practice.

Outline:

Content:

• Unit 1 - Compliance and Financial Crime Risk – Analysis and Explanation (20 credits):
• Develop a multi-layered, multi-level theoretical toolkit to understand:
• Individual motivations and propensities for engaging in risky practices.
• How company cultures, structures, and policies can inadvertently provide the opportunity, means, setting, and rationale for problematic behaviour.
• How wider political-economic environments feed into individual decisions to engage in behaviours bad for business.
• Critically assess which theoretical perspectives provide the most plausible explanations for different risks within the business, both old and emerging.
• Integrate high-level theoretical framing into business policy and practice to reduce, prevent, and respond to internal and external threats.
• Unit 2 - Digital Technologies, Financial Crimes and Compliance (20 credits):
• Gain advanced insights into issues that arise in business in relation to digital trust, digital security, and digital vulnerabilities, with a particular focus on financial crime and compliance risks.
• Processes of misinformation and disinformation in an era of ‘fake news’ and the implications of this for business.
• Individual security of employees and the potential vulnerabilities that arise at the intersection of human and technical interdependencies.
• New and emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies, FinTech, and distributed ledger technologies that generate specific governance, compliance, and financial crime risks and solutions.
• Focus on cyber-enabled, dependent, and/or assisted financial crime risks, such as money laundering, illicit finance, corruption, and more.
• Unit 3 - Data, Evidence and Intelligence on Financial Crime and Compliance (20 credits):
• Evaluate the reliability and robustness of financial crime and compliance data and how these data can be used for informing company policies and strategies.
• Learn methods for evaluating whether policies on financial crime and compliance actually ‘work’ in practice, what the impacts of any given policy are, and how to ascertain whether such insights are robust and reliable (i.e., evidence-based policies vs. policy-based evidence).
• Understand how to ‘make sense’ of social scientific data and evidence and to be critical in scrutinising research findings before evaluating whether they can form the basis of business strategies or feed into decision-making responsibilities.
• Learn about the process of undertaking systematic and rigorous research that will enable you to design and direct the creation of evidence and intelligence for your business, as well as to interpret and assess the research findings of academics, NGOs, and other social research outputs that may be of use to your business strategies and policies.
• Bridge the gap between practice and science, providing you with the concepts, knowledge, and ideas for interacting with statistics and research findings in the area of governance, compliance, and financial crime.
• Acquire and understand a substantial body of knowledge which is at the forefront of an academic discipline or area of professional practice.
• Provide the foundation for undertaking or understanding original empirical research (using quantitative and/or qualitative methodologies) that can form the basis of the (group) dissertation or for undertaking future independent research projects within your organization.
• Provide useful knowledge for those looking to undertake a more advanced research degree (e.g., PhD).
• Project (60 credits):
• Mandatory dissertation component with three optional pathways:
• Option A - Long Dissertation:
Conduct original empirical research and submit a 12,000 – 15,000-word long dissertation.
• Option B - Short Dissertation: Submit a 6,000 – 8,000-word short dissertation exploring a particular issue in detail through a literature review and presenting your findings.
• Complete 2 x Research Skills in Practice topics on:
• Critical Appraisal of the Literature
• Your Responsibilities as a Researcher
• Option C - Group Dissertation:
Collaborate to develop a joint project in a group of three to five students, utilising shared data.
• Create alternative content such as:
• Individual research report (ca.
3,000 words)
• Group/team report including evidence of contribution (ca.
5,000 words)
• End of dissertation presentation (20 mins, equated to 3,000 words)
• Personal reflection on the process (ca.
2,000 words)

Structure:

• Part-time, blended, top-up course designed for working professionals in the financial crime, governance, and compliance fields.
• Flexibility allows you to gain valuable insight into the real-world applications of your learning as you continue to work.
• Only one unit (10 weeks each and 20 weeks for the dissertation) can be completed at a time.
• Course material is studied entirely online with professional and academic support.
• Opportunity to network and exchange ideas with international peers.
• Three practical masterclasses held each year in Manchester, UK to reinforce topics covered and further support development.
• Masterclasses are streamed for those unable to attend in person.

Course Schedule:

• Academic teaching start date for September 2024 entry is 2 September 2024.
• Welcome event and induction take place one week before the academic teaching start date.
• Practical masterclasses take place in week four of each unit.

Modules:

• Unit 1 - Compliance and Financial Crime Risk – Analysis and Explanation (20 credits)
• Unit 2 - Digital Technologies, Financial Crimes and Compliance (20 credits)
• Unit 3 - Data, Evidence and Intelligence on Financial Crime and Compliance (20 credits)
• Project (60 credits)

Assessment:

• Mixture of written coursework (e.g., short essays or reflective contributions), recorded presentations (e.g., using PowerPoint), and online tasks (i.e., quizzes, short reflections and analyses on the content of the weekly session).
• Feedback on formative and summative assessments is provided in written form via Blackboard with optional one-to-one meetings with the teaching staff.
• Project is extremely flexible, allowing you to choose between three 60-credit dissertation options:
• Option A - long dissertation (12,000-15,000-word independent thesis)
• Option B - short dissertation (6,000-8,000-word thesis alongside three short modules on research and practice, available via the online learning environment)
• Option C - group dissertation (submission of alternative content based on group data including an individual research report (ca.
3,000 words), a group/team report including evidence of contribution (ca. 5,000 words), an end of dissertation presentation (20 mins, equated to 3,000 words), and a personal reflection on the process (ca. 2,000 words)).

Teaching:

• Blended learning course with three practical masterclasses per year.
• Taught units are delivered via a virtual learning environment (VLE) where you can access all course materials, online reading lists, podcasts, and the University's extensive online library.
• Induction to the virtual learning environment is provided at the start of the course.
• Course material is highly engaging and includes video content, audio files, and textual materials.
• Virtual learning environment can be used to discuss issues raised in the course materials with the course tutor and fellow students.
• Each course unit complements others, reinforcing key ideas and issues whilst introducing new materials.
• Teaching material is designed with working professionals in mind and will enable you to complete the programme part-time alongside your employment.
• Practical masterclasses offer interactive, practical, case study based workshop activities.
• Sessions involve unique masterclasses from subject matter experts on related and topical issues.
• Attendance in-person is highly recommended, but workshops and masterclasses can be joined online if unable to attend in Manchester, UK.

Careers:

• Inform strategy creation and operational policies to make your organization more efficient, robust, and compliant, and in turn protect customers, investors, and reputations more broadly.
• Recognise business vulnerabilities that emerge in relation to workplace and individual data security as new technologies are integrated into strategic decision-making and policy creation.
• Develop advanced skills for formulating original research questions and designing research projects that can feed into your strategic decision-making.

Other:

• The course is developed in association with the International Compliance Association (ICA).
• The course benefits from the joint expertise of the Department of Criminology’s leading financial crime research and ICA’s externally-verified qualifications, globally recognised as benchmarks of excellence within the industry.
• The course is designed to equip you with the knowledge, expertise, and skills needed to refine your own professional and scientific development.
• The course will enable you to translate ‘science into practice’ and directly contribute to the enhancement of your business organization.
• The course will provide you with the vocabulary to interact with professionals and experts from the digital world, including computer and data scientists, programmers, and other technologists.
• The course will enhance your knowledge on producing evidence-based research on governance, compliance, and financial crime risks within your business.
• The course will give you the confidence to interact with co-employees, advocacy organisations, governmental organisations, and so on, with regards to the foundations of your approaches and proposals to prevention, intervention, and reduction in the sphere of financial crime and compliance risks.

The total course tuition fee for entry in September 2024 is £10,500 (UK/EU/International). The advertised fee covers your tuition. We offer payment by instalments, so you can spread the cost of studying with us.