By Mohammad Shoeb
DOHA: The Qatar Finance and Business Academy (QFBA) formally opened its doors yesterday for a comprehensive training and competency development programme, KAFA’A, which aims at bridging job market gaps and advancing Qatar’s fast growing banking and financial services sector.
The official opening ceremony of the initiative, that came after a year of preparatory works, partnerships and close collaboration with the industry’s key players and regulators, was held in the presence of Minister of Finance H E Ali Sherif Al Emadi.
Present were a number of distinguished guests, including Dr Abdulaziz Al Horr, CEO of QFBA, and other top-ranking government officials, authorities, regulators and industry professionals to showcase its vision, mission, strategy, achievements and future course of action. In a mandate by Qatar’s Financial Markets Development Committee (FMDC) to QFBA, KAFA’A was officially started by QFBA in March 2013, with a chief mission to evolve the capabilities and knowledge of industry professionals, defragment targeted training and Continuous Professional Development (CPD) programmes across Qatar’s financial institutions, and standardise qualification and competency benchmarks to match world-class standards.
Al Horr said: “In the last five years, Qatar has been thrust into the international spotlight, led by a slew of mega developments and infrastructural projects that are ushering it into its next wave of transformational growth. It is a future that has been very clearly and focally imagined by the Qatar National Vision 2030, driven by economic diversification into mainstay and emerging growth sectors.”
He said: “Qatar’s financial sector has long anchored its economic growth, backed by robust longstanding, local financial institutions and global powerhouse names. But for it to continue its growth trajectory into more advanced and developed market levels, it must rise to world-class benchmarks and stature of competency, compliance and regulation.”
He added: “The establishment of KAFA’A embodies this very mission, pioneering an industry model with structure, depth and breadth, and bringing under its umbrella all stakeholders and ecosystem shapers in Qatar’s financial sector; a collaborative, knowledge-based, platform that follows through the future evolution of the sector’s key driving forces — conventional and Islamic banking, insurance and capital markets — by bridging gaps between educational and career advancement, job market gaps and competency development, and private and public sector policy and decision makers.”
Highlighting KAFA’A’s ambitions to standardise a stringent set of world-class competency development benchmarks, as well as targeted training programmes for Qatar’s financial sector, Dr Al Horr explained that the framework model was the culmination of extensive research studies on and assessment of not only the local market but also international case studies and best practices in developed markets like Singapore, Hong Kong, the UK and Australia.
The programme encompasses key disciplines across but not limited to: retail, corporate and private banking; treasury and investments; risk management and compliance; finance; internal audit; insurance; and capital and Islamic capital markets.
KAFA’A’s is backed by a robust structure of financial regulators —the Qatar Central Bank, the Qatar Financial Markets Authority and the QFC Regulatory authority —that will support it in key areas, such as licensing, supervision and surveillance, consumer protection, financial stability, economics, reserve management, issuer management, financial products, intermediaries and exchanges, among others.
The Peninsula
