Banking & Finance

Level 1.1

Accounting & Finance

This module aims to impart basic accounting and finance knowledge. Students will be taught how to interpret and use financial accounting information for decision-making. This module will also cover budgeting, financing strategies, working capital management as well as capital investment analysis.

Business Communication 1

This module enables students to deliver clear and logical messages to their audience. They will develop written communication skills through crafting business messages such as business letters, emails, and meeting minutes. In addition, students will work through presentations and simulated meetings to refine their spoken communication skills, discussion techniques and people skills.

Business Law

This module equips students with a basic knowledge of the fundamentals of business law and its application in a business environment. Topics include the Singapore legal system, law of contract, agency law, law of tort, law of business organisations, introduction to company law, intellectual property law and business ethics.

Global Business

This module will enable students to learn the fundamentals of business and build socio-cultural skills. It immerses students in the reality of the business world and helps them understand the impact of globalisation. Students will discuss how contemporary world affairs affect business strategies that may influence business success.

User-Centred Design in Business

This module provides students with practical insights and methods into designing content for digital media communication using user-centred design principles and approaches. Students will apply these principles to address issues related to user experience design, information design, interface design, presentation, imagery and visualisation of information on various digital devices and platforms.

Level 1.2

Business Statistics & Applications

Students are introduced to the basic concepts of statistics for decision-making in the business world. They will also be taught how to organise and analyse data, and interpret the results. Student will learn to create, capture and manipulate data in spreadsheet formats to help businesses solve business problems and improve business operations and processes. Students will also learn to organise and present data using spreadsheets to aid in their analysis and interpretation.

Career & Professional Preparation

This module helps to give students a foundational introduction to their three-year diploma course curriculum and how it prepares them for industry. It will help them embark on their three-year course with the end in mind through guided reflection on their personal characteristics and development of an overall game plan for their future education and career goals.

Digital Business Solutions

This module aims to provide the students with an introduction to programming. It covers the basic tenets of algorithmic thinking to problem solving. It also covers the desired characteristics of programmes that are easy to read and modify. To ensure relevance to the industry, business-oriented programming problems and cases will be used for discussion and practice.

Economics

This module provides a grounding in the basic concepts in Microeconomics and Macroeconomics. Students will examine the economic choices made by consumers, firms, and see how these decisions affect the market for a particular good or service. They will also analyse the working of a typical economy. Topics include the demand and supply of a good, production costs, price determination and supply decisions for individual firms in different market structures, economic growth, unemployment, inflation, fiscal policy, and monetary policy.

Course Curriculum (Year 1)

Level 2.1

Business Communication 2

This module builds on the foundation of Business Communication 1 and creates opportunities for students to strengthen their oral and written communication. Students will be required to enhance their presentation skills through impromptu speeches. Students will also learn how to prepare a formal business report. Job hunting and employment skills will be introduced to prepare students for a positive start to their careers. Students will be taught to write application letters and resumes. Additionally, students will learn job interview techniques through role-plays and simulations.

Corporate Finance

This module will give an overview of the local corporate advisory services and valuations in investment banking. Building upon financial management fundamentals, students will explore the use of appropriate approaches and valuation tools to assess and value projects, business segments and companies.

Digital Banking

This module provides an overview of the current trends and emerging technologies that drive digital banks. It covers the concepts and characteristics of open banking, including the use of open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Students will learn how third-party developers use APIs to build applications and services offered by financial institutions to provide greater financial transparency options for account holders, ranging from open data to private data. Case studies and problem scenarios in the banking and finance sector will be used for teaching.

Financial Markets & Services

This module examines the role of financial markets, its players and its instruments on the economy and the status of Singapore as a financial centre. The module will explore the relationships between the various markets such as the capital, foreign exchange and money markets, instruments traded and its participants with emphasis given to current events and trends in these markets.

Financial Planning

This module aims to provide a coherent understanding of personal financial planning in the midst of fast changes in the financial services industry and the blurring of product lines within the financial sector. The module will equip students with technical and conceptual financial planning knowledge to prepare them for a career in the financial services industry.

Level 2.2

Banking Analytics

The module aims to introduce a set of analytics and visualisation tools that enable managers to make sense of the business in the banking and financial sector. Students will learn model-building techniques, machine learning applied in the banking context and get hands-on practice to analyse data for business decision-making and strategy development.

Commercial Banking

This module equips students with the foundation of commercial banking. They will be taught the various functions of commercial banking, such as trade finance, forex, technology and operations. Students will also be exposed to a credit evaluation framework to assess the credit risk of a company and gain an understanding of the regulatory framework set out in commercial banking.

Financial Inclusion and the Community

This module provides students with hands-on application of financial planning knowledge and skills to help individuals/ businesses in a targeted community to identify and access financial products and services that will meet their financial needs and goals. Using service learning as a pedagogy, students will develop social-cultural, civic, and ethical responsibility to engage the targeted community by using appropriate financial planning tools and identifying the right financial products.

Investments

Students will learn the principles of investments, discuss and analyse the characteristics of various investment products such as equity, fixed income securities, futures and options, and use various valuation techniques to value these securities. Students will be equipped with the knowledge to use industry tools and trading platforms to make sound investment decisions.

Settlements & Operations Management

This module provides an overview of the importance of compliance, risk management and control in the back office. Students will be equipped with the knowledge of the processing flow, various payment systems and confirmations for the settlement of trades in the money market, foreign exchange, fixed income and equity markets, and an understanding of strategic issues in operations such as straight-through processing, business continuity plans and outsourcing.

Course Curriculum (Year 2)

Level 3.1

Business Persuasion & Influence

This practical module aims to help students be persuasive in the business world. Students will learn data gathering skills to better understand their target audience’s needs and requirements and persuasive skills to convince the audience to accept a new policy/suggestion/product through role-playing a boardroom presentation. Students will also be taught relationship building skills and business networking skills through role-plays and simulations.

Digital Marketing for Financial Services

This module provides students with the knowledge of developing an omni-channel marketing strategy to market financial services and products. The latest digital marketing trends in the banking and financial services sector, such as data-driven marketing, will also be taught in the module. Students will be introduced to various tools to measure customer experience with the branding strategy adopted.

Risk & Compliance

This module aims to create an awareness of an understanding of uncertainty and risk in organisations based on an integrated framework to risk management. Students will also consider the risk of legal or regulatory sanctions, material financial loss or loss to a bank’s reputation with a focus on the operational aspects of compliance and its essential role to preserve the integrity and reputation of a financial institution, and the impact of Regulatory Technology on banking risk and regulatory compliance.

Wealth Management

This module provides students with an understanding of wealth management. This includes technical skills such as an overview of different investment products like derivative and structured products, real estate and real estate investment trusts (REITs), unit trusts & exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and soft skills such as client relationship management and effective selling and communication techniques. Students will be given an overview of the private banking business and taught concepts involved in wealth management such as investment strategies, portfolio performance measurement and management, and asset allocation.

Level 3.2

6-Month Internship

Students will acquire work experience through supervised work immersion and on-the-job training of six months with financial institutions, government-related agencies, multinationals and other corporations. Students learn beyond the classroom boundaries with professional practitioners as their mentors. They will be provided with relevant training and equipped with knowledge and skills to enable them to perform effectively in their workplace attachments.

Course Curriculum (Year 3)