95625 - Fundamentals of Banking

Learning outcomes

The course is designed for students who want to increase their familiarity with finance, banks, financial intermediation, financial markets and financial instruments. At the end of the course, students have the basic skills to work within financial institutions, financial advisory firms and corporate finance department.

Course contents

Students who successfully complete this course will be able to:
1. Understand the functioning of financial institutions, financial markets and instruments.
2. Explain how resources are efficiently transferred from those with a surplus to those with a deficit
3. Analyze the risks that modern financial institutions face in their daily activities.
4. Critically examine the ethical, legal and global issues in modern financial markets and intermediaries.

5. Recognize the impact of technology on the financial sector.

 

Readings/Bibliography

Financial Markets and Institutions, by Mishkin, F., Eakins, S., 10th ed., 2024. Pearson.

Teaching methods

The course will be organized as frontal lextures. The lecturer will also organize seminaries where articles from the financial press will be analyzed in order to illustrate the concepts discussed in class previously.

Assessment methods

The assessment cosists of a final written exam which will last 2 hours. The final exam will comprise a variety of questions, such as multiple choice, true/false and problem solving ones. Moreover, there could be an extract of an article from the financial press which has to be analyzed by the student. During the exam, students are allowed to use calculators, and formulas for quantitative problems.

The passing grades for students are in the range 18-30 cum laude (30L). These grades are based on the following evaluation criteria:

18-23: The student has sufficient preparation and analytical skills, spread however, over just few topics taught in the course, the overall jargon is correct.
24-27: The student shows an adequate preparation at a technical level with some doubts over the topics. Good, yet not too articulated analytical skills with the use of a correct jargon.
28-30: Great knowledge about most of the topics taught in the course, good critical and analytical skills, good usage of the specific jargon.
30 cum laude (30L): Excellent and in depth knowledge of all the topics in the course, excellent critical and analytical skills, excellent usage of specific jargon.

The grade obtained in this module will make up 50% of the final grade of the integrated course Fundamentals of Banking and Finance

 

Teaching tools

All teaching material will be posted on Virtuale. During part of the classes students could use Microsoft Excel or Word. The instructor will ask students to use accessible databases for Unibo students such as Orbis Bank Focus.

Office hours

See the website of Andi Duqi