  We consider the approximation of stochastic differential equations (SDEs)
with non-Lipschitz drift or diffusion coefficients. We present a modified
explicit Euler-Maruyama discretisation scheme that allows us to prove strong
convergence, with a rate. Under some regularity and integrability conditions,
we obtain the optimal strong error rate. We apply this scheme to SDEs widely
used in the mathematical finance literature, including the
Cox-Ingersoll-Ross~(CIR), the 3/2 and the Ait-Sahalia models, as well as a
family of mean-reverting processes with locally smooth coefficients. We
numerically illustrate the strong convergence of the scheme and demonstrate its
efficiency in a multilevel Monte Carlo setting.
