Date:30/11/2005 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2005/11/30/stories/2005113002840600.htm

Back Banks tie up with colleges to design specific courses for students

Priya Nair

Mumbai , Nov. 29

FACED with a shortage of experienced hands even as they expand services and products, banks are forced to tie up with colleges to offer courses specific to banking. The banks are assured of a ready pool of candidates suited to their requirements and the students get to acquire specialised skills.

Some areas that are seeing a shortage of trained persons are wealth management or private banking, risk-weighted appraisals, investment banking and treasury operations, say experts.

ICICI Bank has tied up with 26 management colleges to teach topics such as private banking or wealth management, said Mr Arpit Agarwal, Head-Private Banking. The bank has hired 350 personnel for this segment and plans to hire 250 more.

In July, the bank organised a camp for college professors and helped them design a course on the subject.

ICFAI's Business School (IBS) offers this elective, as part of its MBA programme, said Mr R.H. Sharma, Chairman of IBS' Centre for Advanced Banking and Finance Studies.

Even foreign banks, such as Deutsche Bank and ABN Amro, are looking at wealth management in a big way, Mr Sharma said.

HDFC Bank is considering a tie-up with educational institutions to offer banking-specific courses, said its Managing Director, Mr Aditya Puri.

"We are now starting to work with educational institutions because we find a disconnect between the type of people that are being produced by these institutions and the job requirements coming up. We may need people who know wealth management, technology, branch sales and foreign exchange. So we have now started discussing with 12-15 institutions where we will help them design courses of this type," he said.

Some other institutes that have banking-specific courses are Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, Mumbai, which offers an advanced diploma in banking and finance management, and IIM-Indore that offers six electives in banking and insurance.

IBS offers a full-time MBA with specialisation in banking and niche programmes of six-month duration on topics such as international banking, treasury and risk management.

The Institute also plans to launch a part-time MBA with focus on banking. This course too has been designed after discussions with banks and is meant for working non-MBA banking executives.