Quant Guide 2020: King’s College London

London, UK

 

The Financial Mathematics MSc at King’s College London has grown significantly since it last appeared in the Risk.net quant guide: it now has 102 students versus 2019’s 77. Among the latest cohort, 78 are international. While a high proportion of international students is typical for most quantitative finance programmes, King’s may have particular appeal for non-domestic candidates due to its fee structure: the cost of the master’s – £29,850 ($38,800) – is the same for all students, regardless of country of origin.

The year-long programme has also recently appointed a new academic director in Roxana Dumitrescu, lecturer in financial mathematics, who takes over from professor of financial mathematics Teemu Pennanen.

The master’s teaching at King’s is based on a range of modules, some of which are compulsory. The current set of required modules are: probability theory, risk-neutral validation – worth 15 credits apiece – and a 60-credit project component. Candidates are encouraged to take a supplementary class in mathematical analysis for financial mathematics which does not confer academic credit.

On top of compulsory courses, students most complete 90 credits’ worth of elective material. Each elective counts for 15 credits and there are a total of 12 to choose from. They include: stochastic analysis; C++ for financial mathematics; incomplete markets; econophysics, which applies probabilistic and statistics methods to economics; machine learning; numerical and computational methods in finance; and optimisation in finance and data analysis.

King’s students can also take certain elective classes at members of the University of London group, including University College London, the London School of Economics and Birkbeck. Access to Bloomberg terminals is available on the programme.

While the careers figures provided to Risk.net are limited – King’s was not able to access employment data for 62% of the MSc’s graduates – recent employers of the programme’s alumni include Credit Suisse, HSBC and Morgan Stanley.

View this institution’s entry in the 2019 guide

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