Training: Course Catalog

Listed below is the full range of our current training courses by category. For additional details please e-mail us at courses@citadeladvantege.com indicating the courses that you are interested in.

FINTECH

FinTech for Non-IT Professionals

From start-ups all around the world, entrepreneurs are applying their creativity and technical ingenuity all along the financial services value chain.

This wave of innovation promises a FinTech revolution that will change financial services for ever. For consumers and business alike there is the promise of vastly improved financial services.

Consumers will get more choices and keener pricing. Small and medium sized businesses will gain access to new forms and lines of credit. Banks productivity will increase, transaction costs will come down, operational resilience will be better.

All this will lead to a more resilient financial system with greater diversity, redundancy and depth.

Most importantly financial services will become more inclusive, while people will become better connected, more informed and increasingly empowered.

If you want to keep up-to-date in the fast changing FinTech scenario you need to understand what it is all about. And if you are a non-IT professional you need this information presented in clear non-technical terms.

This two day unique training course offers a comprehensive introduction to FinTech for Non-IT Professionals, what FinTech is all about and how it is changing financial, banking and commercial systems and the world.

During the course we will explore FinTech components in terms of a wide range of issues, which include;

Individual innovation clusters within each function.
An analysis of the current state of business models and processes.
Examining key innovations in terms of their characteristics and the implications of their use.
Look at some current examples of actual innovations.
Discuss potential outcomes.
Where appropriate, we will include a case study.

PAYMENTS & SETTLEMENTS

International Trade Finance

An intensive 2-day primer for on all aspects of International Trade Finance. This course has been tailored for professionals in banking, commerce and trade & industry who need to gain a closer understanding of International Trade Finance, what it is and how it works.

The course provides a comprehensive foundation for understanding all aspects of International Trade Finance in a global context, covering the key principles, concepts, infrastructures, practices, issues, and current developments.

The course includes critical subject material on, among others:

The underlying operations and processes in the international trade environment,
Foreign exchange & currency principles,
How trade finance is provided,
Trade finance instruments, International payments, and
Supply Chain Finance

This course will be of especial interest to banking & commercial professionals who wish to expand their knowledge base enhance their expertise and advance their careers into the international trade finance arena.

Digital Banking - New Business Opportunities

This two-day course training program shows you how technology is changing the face of banking and how it is altering both its risk profile and business model. This technology has major positive implications for banking – for banks and their customers alike.

The term ‘Digital Banking’ is one of the most miss-understood concepts in the financial world today. Many simply see Digital Banking as mobile banking or on-line banking. They see it as an add-on to existing and traditional banking services. All of these are too narrow focused. They fail to see the big picture.

Rapid technological changes in recent years have revolutionized the way banking services and products are produced and delivered to consumers, small businesses and corporates alike.

We are all familiar with how the Internet, the Mobile-phone and Smartcards have changed the way we live our lives.

To innovative, progressive, go-ahead banks these changes, known collectively as Digital Banking hold great promise to change the way banking operations are carried out. With this change will come new operational processes, procedures and business models.

International & Domestic Payments

This is an intensive 2-day primer for payments professionals on payments (both international & domestic). This course has been tailored for those who need to gain a closer understanding of the payments arena.

The course provides them with a comprehensive foundation for understanding payments in a national and international context, covering the key principles, concepts, infrastructures, practices, issues, and current developments.

International Payments

This intensive 2-day primer for on International Payments and has been tailored for payment professionals, either in commerce or banking who need to gain a closer understanding of International Payments; what they are and how they work.

The course provides a comprehensive understanding of payments in a global context, covering the key principles, concepts, infrastructures, practices, issues, and current developments.

This course will be of especial interest to payments and other professionals who wish to expand their knowledge base and advancing their careers into the global payments arena.

Advanced International Payments

International Payments is the largest and most liquid marketplace in the global economy. Daily foreign exchange market turnover now averages $1.9 trillion.

There are a number of factors which are critical to the smooth functioning of International Payments including the adoption of good practices, promoting improvements in risk management in the international market, and the development of supporting actions that facilitate greater contractual certainties in international payments and foreign exchange.

This advanced course provides a solid foundation in how the actual foreign exchange trading processes work, what the risks are and how these can be mitigated by using clearly defined Standards of Best Practice across the full range of the relevant business and operational activities.

OPERATIONS / BACK OFFICE

Cash Management in a Government Treasury Department

The management of the money resources of a country has usually been the primary function of the national Treasury department. Whether it is regulating national banks, determining international economic policy, collecting income and excise taxes, issuing securities, reporting the government's daily financial transactions, or manufacturing coins or notes for circulation, the one concern that still ties together the activities of the Department of the Treasury is money.
The Department of the Treasury remains the foremost financial institution of any country with a full-time agenda of accounting, revenue collection, money production, and economic policy formulation.

This intensive 5-day training program provides the introduction to cash management within a National/ Government Treasury function in compliance with IMF/ World Bank standards.

The program addresses the following main issues:

What are the main objectives of modern cash management?
What are good cash management practices in developed countries?
What are the main features of the framework for short-term cash planning?
What are the main challenges for improving cash management in low- and middle-income countries?
How should cash management reforms be sequenced?

Strategies for Optimizing Your Cash Management

Cash management is the corporate process of collecting, managing and investing cash (in the short term). Cash management is a key component of ensuring a company's financial stability and solvency.

This 2-day course looks at the all-inclusive strategies that today’s firm needs to follow to ensure that that all the aspects of the business’ financial profile is optimized.

Given the cost of new capital, no business can afford to let their existing capital go to waste. However, some businesses don’t realize how much cash is trapped on their own balance sheets. Freeing up that cash – by optimizing their working capital – delivers more than improved operational efficiency. It also gives companies the added liquidity they need to fund growth, reduce debt levels, lower costs, maximize shareholder returns and even outperform their competitors.

This course focuses on four core strategies;

Accounts receivable,
Accounts payable, Cash management, and
Inventory.

Additionally we take a closer look at one of the key tools that binds this all together – Forecasting.

Operations Improvement and Managing Change

Operations Improvement and innovation are the actions taken to identify, analyze and improve existing business and other operational processes within an organisation to meet its goals and objectives. These may include the need to reduce costs, achieve greater operational efficiencies, or the merging and simplification of existing business units and their processes. Business/Operations process improvement follows a specific methodology or strategy to create successful results. All business operations whether back-office, middle-office or front-office are based on business processes. This is a core part of your organizations operations.

RISK, OPERATIONS RISK MANAGEMENT & COMPLIANCE

Anti-Corruption Compliance

In recent years, scores of economies, from Britain to Brazil have followed America’s lead in tightening anti-bribery enforcement. Offences that once drew a mere reprimand now attract fines that run into hundreds of millions of dollars together with long prison terms for offending employees and managers.

Bribery directly damages your business and your reputation. However your business is not the only victim. The wider losers are the government and the larger society, both of whom are severely undermined by the weakened rule of law and damaged economic and social development. As such, Governments are making anti-corruption programs an integral part of compliance.

All firms, corporate or other need to have an effective compliance program wherever they operate and in whatever industry they operate in.
This two-day intensive training course is a practical look at corruption, current anti-corruption practices and how to effectively comply at a level that equips participants with both a clear definition and guidelines as to how this scourge can be fought, as well as a set of detailed issues and checklists to help make setting up your own anti-corruption program doable.

Risk Based Internal Auditing (RBIA)

Risk Based Internal Auditing (RBIA) is defined by the IIA as a "methodology that links internal auditing to an organization’s overall risk management framework". RBIA allows internal audit to provide assurance to the bank/organization’s board that risk the various management processes are managing risks effectively, in relation to the risk appetite of the bank/organization.

These assurances deal inter alia with three critical areas:

Risk management processes - their design and how well they are working
Management of those risks classified as 'key' - including the effectiveness of the controls and other responses to them
Complete, accurate and appropriate reporting and classification of risks

Implemented correctly, RBIA offers tremendous advantages to the bank/ organization over the traditional internal audit approach.

This intensive 2-day course is all about RBIA, what it is, how it differs from the conventional internal audit and most importantly of all how it may be planned and implemented within the entity/organization.

Global Anti-Money Laundering & KYC Compliance

In recent times regulators have shown an extremely heightened focus on AML/ KYC, with huge fines being levied against global financial institutions - such as HSBC and Standard Chartered - that fail to comply with current legislation. The risks are high for financial institutions should they fail to ensure a proper screening process in their AML operations.

In this context, proper compliance is critical.

This 2-day intensive highly practical course is designed for bankers and people working in the financial services industry to provide them with a better understanding of:

Money laundering and terrorist financing;
Suspicious transaction reporting and suspicious activity indicators;
Customer due diligence and record keeping; and
Compliance with domestic and international regulatory standards.

An effective AML compliance program requires sound risk management; to this end this course provides guidance on identifying and controlling risks associated with money laundering and terrorist financing. The course provides an overview of AML compliance program requirements, AML risks and risk management expectations, industry sound practices, and examination procedures.

Auditing e-Banking

This three- day course provides a clear understanding the nature of e-banking and how the many different e-banking systems should be audited.

Rapid technological changes in recent years have revolutionised the way banking services and products are delivered to consumers, small businesses and corporates alike. We are all familiar with how the Internet, the Mobile-phone, Smartcards have changed our lives.

Electronic banking carries its own unique characteristics, which sometimes increases and modifies some of the traditional risks associated with banking activities.

Learn how to develop and apply an effective e-banking audit programme.
Gain an insight into the today’s e-banking world.
Understand the different risks as they relate to e-banking activities.
Explore the international standards for managing e-banking risk.
Gain a clear insight into the many different aspects of e-banking/ e-payments through the mobile phone.

In this three-day course, we review the world of e-Banking, showing the benefits and the risks. e-Banking may be harnessed to the benefit of bank and customer alike. We examine the various e-banking channels, how they function and show how they should be audited in terms of both standard audit practice as well as the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) standards.

Basel - A Comprehensive Introduction & Overview

Basel II has been criticized, unfairly, for failing to cope with the stresses of the credit crunch but in reality no amount of capital or regulation would have protected the banking system from its self- destructive tendency to invest in instruments that it is now clear, most of them did not fully understand. It was more a case of regulatory supervision failure – the implementation - rather than flaws in the rules themselves

Basel is a “work in progress” with the major changes phased in very gradually. Some changes have already been implemented, others are awaited. What is clear is that the move towards even closer supervision and separation of bank activities will continue and we can expect more emphasis on qualitative rather than quantitative controls with both liquidity and capital adequacy at the forefront.

This two day workshop is designed to explain, the role of Basel II and its successor, Basel III in the risk management function. It demonstrates how it adds value to an organisation despite its flaws and it explains the key components of risk management.

Business Continuity Management & Scenario Planning

Business Continuity Planning is the process through which an organization ensures the maintenance or recovery of operations, including services to customers, when faced with disruptive events such as natural disasters, technological failures, human error, or terrorism. This course includes 5 detailed case studies and a heavily interactive section on developing effective scenarios.

At completion of this 3-day course participants will be able to identify and prepare action plans dealing with potential risks and their impact as well as implement the business continuity recovery process.

Corporate Governance

Over the last decade corporate governance has become established as an area of increasing academic, political and commercial debate. It has now become essential for any middle or senior manager to have an understanding of the key aspects of effective corporate governance.

This 2-day course will provide participants with:

an overview of current thinking and developments in the field of corporate governance.
the ability to effectively administer corporate affairs within an organization and to contribute to corporate performance at a senior level.
a comprehension of the interrelationship between management, finance, law and ethics in the field of corporate governance.
an understanding of ethics and values in the business community and the relationship to corporate governance.

Board Evaluations Workshop

Board Evaluations are today a vital part of the Corporate Governance process.
A well-planned and well-executed Board evaluation that takes into account the unique culture, bylaws and needs of the Board can expose issues that hinder effective Board performance.

The workshop has been designed specifically for Board members and senior Executives and provides all that you need to know on the Board Evaluation process.

This one-day workshop may be taken as a standalone course or together with our two-day course on Corporate Governance.

ERM (Enterprise Risk Management)

This 2 day course is aimed at providing participants with the necessary knowledge and skill-set to understand the risk management processes and explore the benefits of Enterprise Risk Management as well as to demonstrate how the COSO – ERM framework enables organizations and their management to:

Comply with the legal & best practice requirements for corporate governance,
Align risk appetite with strategy,
Enhance risk response decisions,
Reduce operational risk and losses,
Identify and manage multiple and cross-organizational risks,
Provide integrated responses to multiple risks,
Improve the deployment of capital.

Advanced Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Training Course

“Advanced Enterprise Risk Management” is designed for the risk management professional who seeks to take his/her expertise beyond the basic understanding of enterprise risk and how it should be implemented and managed in the real world.

This program is available as a 2-day in-person course or as a distance learning course.

The Advanced Enterprise Risk Management program builds on the basic theory of ERM (from, for example, our Enterprise Risk Management training course) and explores the subject to a much greater degree of depth as regards current ERM methodologies and the setting of risk management boundaries.

This program is exceptionally rich in detailed exercises with a high degree of realism applicable to current business and risk management practices. These exercises are at a practical level with a level of depth intended to test a participant’s existing and expanded risk management knowledge and expertise.

On a practical level the course takes a detailed look, through Case Studies, at the ERM programs at five diverse business enterprises and explores how each of them achieved (or is still achieving) its own ERM objectives.

Prior knowledge / training in the field of ERM is a prerequisite for participation in this training program.

Management of Operational Risk in Foreign Exchange Activities

The last decade has seen the diversification and massive expansion of the foreign exchange market. While in the past, commercial banks dominated the market, participants today also include commercial & investment banks, foreign exchange dealers, brokerage companies, multinational corporations, money managers, commodity trading advisors, insurance companies, governments, central banks, pension & hedge funds, investment companies, and brokers/dealers.

The increased complexity of the market plus the higher trade volumes have necessitated constant changes in trading procedures, trade capture systems, operational procedures, and risk management tools.

This 2-day course provides a solid foundation to all parties involved in foreign exchange activities whether at executive, marketing, audit or operational levels into how the actual trading processes work, what the risks are and how these can be mitigated by using clearly defined Standards of Best Practice.

Managing Cross-System Risks in Your Payments & Settlements

The Bank for International Settlements has highlighted concerns that the speed and multiplicity of potential disruption across the global payment system are not adequately reflected in stress-tests, risk controls, contingency funding plans, and crisis management procedures. The safety of the global payment and settlement infrastructure requires that system operators, bank, financial institutions, and service providers have a clear understanding of payment and settlement risks, and that they manage those risks effectively. The growing range of interdependencies between systems, changes the nature of risks present in the global infrastructure.

This course aims to provide participants with the knowledge of payments systems, how they operate and how they occupy a pivotal position in both national and international financial systems. It also seeks to provide participants with the skills that they need to develop a framework for analyzing the risks of interdependencies, along with clear specifics on how these should be addressed. For central banks it also provides their staff will clear guidelines as to the formulation of appropriate policies in managing the problem created by interdependencies in light of the increasingly integrated nature of the global financial infrastructure.

Managing Operations Risk Under Basel III

This is an intensive course on Operations Risk Management & Mitigation – from assessment to implementation. This course explores the Operations Risk management function and mitigation requirements as set out in the Basel III accords. It is intended to move the participants beyond the international compliance requirements for operational risk and into an understanding of risk as a value added proposition, increasing profitability and structural strength.

This course is available as a 2-day and 3-day version. Both deal extensively with the theory of Operational Risk and its management. The 3-day version has a strong focus on specific operational risks.

Operations Risk - Active Management & Compliance (Industry)

Implementing an effective Operational Risk Management regimen is a complex process. At its core is an understanding of what Operations Risk is and how best it can be managed. Too often firms have seen the need to effectively manage their operational risks as simply an issue of complying with what the regulators require, rather than a disciplined process that serves to not only ensure a business’s survival but which can, in the long run, contribute to that business’s financial fortune.

In this three day intensive course, we survey the full ambit of Operations Risk Management & Mitigation – from assessment to implementation. During this course we set out a number of key actions which need to be taken by management in the short and medium term to be ready for implementation of a proper risk management program. It is intended to move the participants beyond the local and international compliance requirements for operations risk, and into an understanding of operations risk management and mitigation as a value added proposition, increasing the organization’s profitability and structural strength.

Advanced Operations Risk

This intensive and practical 2-day course dealing with Advanced Operations Risk furnishes participants with an appreciation of the effectiveness, practicality and measurement of mitigating actions available to Operations Risk Managers in dealing with the potential hazards regarding people, process, systems and external events.

The course and its detailed case studies will allow participants to use the tools and techniques they have covered to manage operational risk as they work through an actual Operations Risk case study, allowing the to appreciate the warning signs and the multi faceted impacts of operational risk events.

Participants will also gain a valuable insight into domestic and international compliance issues through a detailed case study of the recent defalcations of several major international banks in a series of sanction busting operations designed to bypass national and international law.

Reducing Risks in Foreign Exchange Settlements

The BIS Steering Group on Settlement Risk in Foreign Exchange Transactions has concluded that while encouraging progress has been made, specifically with the creation of the Continuous Linked Settlement (CLS) process, more still needs to be done. While many individual banks and groups of financial institutions have greatly improved the way they manage their foreign exchange settlement exposures, many banks still do not manage their exposures appropriately and industry efforts have not yet realized their full risk-reducing potential.

This 2-day intensive course takes you directly into the world of Foreign Exchange Risk. Participants will gain a deeper insight into Foreign Exchange Settlement Risk, what it is and what is needed to control it. Different types of settlement mechanisms are examined in detail, including how banks, worldwide, handle these processes today. Because of its significance the CLS concept, processes and practicalities are examined in detail.

Risk Management - Focus on Fraud

This 2-day intensive course on fraud (a critical element of Operational Risk) clearly illustrates the huge challenges faced by banks, and the need for them to radically modify their behaviour and increase their vigilance in many of the traditional risks associated with banking activities.

This course provides a clear introduction to the world of fraud risk management. This two-day course exposes participants to how modern fraud activities are altering its risk profile and what should be done to mitigate them.

Risks in Wholesale Payment Systems

This 2-day course is divided into sections covering aspects of wholesale payment systems, critical risk factors, legal framework for interbank payment systems, and commercial and central bank payment systems risk policy.

Participants will learn & discuss the world of payment and settlement systems: RTGS, LVTS, hybrid- settlement models, high-value net settlements, TARGET 2, SEPA and CLS. The course also covers Identify interbank payment messaging systems and in-house funds transfer systems, understand securities settlement systems, defining the role of risk management and liquidity management in wholesale payment systems, the legal aspects surrounding the processes & systems, and the evolving wholesale payments systems landscape.

Managing Risk in Electronic-Banking

Rapid technological changes in recent years have revolutionized the way banking services and products are delivered to Corporates and Consumers alike. We are all familiar with how the Internet, the cell-phone, Smartcards and even ATMs have changed our lives. These changes have dramatically modified and in some cases increased some of the traditional risks associated with banking activities, in particular strategic, operational, legal and reputational risks. In turn this has influenced the overall risk profile of banking.

Electronic banking carries its own unique characteristics, which increases and modifies some of the traditional risks associated with banking activities, including the extraordinary speed of change related to technological and customer service innovation, the global nature of open electronic networks, integration of electronic banking applications with legacy computer systems, and increasing dependence of banks on third parties that provide the necessary I.T. on which electronic banking depends.

This course examines how the traditional risk profile has shifted and focuses on these changes and what needs to be done to effectively implement an efficient operational risk regime that includes all the required controls. In essence, we examine how to tame this tiger known as electronic banking.

SECURITIES

International Securities Clearing/Settlement and Custodial Services

This training program is designed to provide delegates with practical knowledge about the key concepts, systems, processes and procedures in international securities settlement and custodial services as well as operational risks involved. Participants will have a chance to gain skills necessary to facilitate day-to-day transactions and communication processes between all parties involved.