The Swedish Trade Council, Sida and KPMG arranged seminar in Baghdad

On July 27th, representatives from KPMG Sweden, Leif Waller and Francois Bonnevie at the Financial Risk Management department, held a presentation seminar about their up-coming training programme "Risk Management in Financing and Banking" for the Iraqi finance and bank sector.

The programme is part of KPMG's International Development Services and is financed by the Swedish International Development  Cooperation Agency - Sida. KPMG Sweden has performed this programme 16 times during the past years. More than 300 participants from 54 countries have been on the programme.

The objective of the seminar was to promote and present the programme for the Iraqi finance and bank sector, whereby a number of middle and high level banking professionals were invited to the Swedish Embassy in Baghdad to get a better understanding of the programme and show interest in participating in the training programme, being held in Sweden between October 4th - 22nd, 2010.

More than 25 invitees, representing both the public and private banking sector, as well as representatives from supervisory authorities such as the Central Bank of Iraq and Ministry of Finance attended the seminar.

The training programme in Sweden will focus on analysis on convergences between different risk management methodologies, risk management for administrative and legal risk, organization and control systems in credit granting process, anti money laundering, terrorist financing and corruption, programme and change management, just to mention a few areas of focus. Lecturers on the programme are KPMGs finance sector specialist, all seniors with long practical experience. Guest lecturers are invited from leading banks, the central bank and the financial supervisory authority. The programme is case based and practically oriented. 

The target group being invited and selected to travel to Sweden later this autumn is primarily managers with responsibility for business development, credit granting, administration, trading and / or investing, lawyers within banks, financial institutions and supervisory authorities etc, managers with responsibility for the procurement of analytical tools for risk management within private and public sector, financial institutions, "high potentials" from financial institutions, universities or other institutions of importance to the financial sector, decision makers or other individuals with the vision and mandate to drive the development and change process within the financial sector in Iraq.

The objective with this training programme is for Sweden to contribute to a long term capacity for reform and change within the financial sector in Iraq. By supporting these kinds of training programmes and further increase the understanding of a sound and well functioning bank system and a functioning stock market in Iraq, it will contribute to openness and poverty reduction as well as economic growth, which in turn will enable a healthy development of the local business sector in the country and strengthen foreign initiatives for international trade with Iraq.