Finance is often defined simply as the management of money or “funds” management. Modern finance, however, is a family of business activity that includes the origination, marketing, and management of cash and money surrogates through a variety of capital accounts, instruments, and markets created for transacting and trading assets, liabilities, and risks. Financial decisions affect everything that an organization does.

The Finance major involves both required and elective courses in three areas:

1. The area of corporate finance encompasses tools and techniques for valuing productive assets, choosing ways to fund them, and gauging financial success.
2. In the area of investments, theoretical and practical models help assess risks and rewards of stocks, bonds, derivatives, and other financial assets, as well as the financial health of firms and institutions offering them to the investing public.
3. The area of markets and institutions explores ways in which bankers, brokers, and other financial institutions convert saving into productive capital.