Yerevan /Mediamax/. Interview of Samvel Grigoryan, Director and Shareholder of BSC training-consulting company##, to Mediamax and Banks.am portal

- What is the level of financial market participants’ involvement in BSC training programs?

- Trainings, being a tool for personnel retraining, provide for certain investments in human capital. Till recently, Armenian employers, representing the country’s various spheres of business-activity, had not been ready for such investment in the view of a number of psychology factors.

However, starting from 2006, the situation started changing: private sector enterprises gradually began considering the given aspect of activity an objective necessity along the path of withstanding new competition challenges. This year, the stirring up of employers entered the main phase and preserves growth tendencies.

The above-mentioned period of time coincided with growth of competition tendencies in the financial market of the country. Banks and credit organizations started sending their employees to open trainings.

Starting from 2006, we have been registering twofold growth of participation of banking and credit specialists in BSC various training programs. So, if in 2006, we had approximately 30 learners, in 2007 – they already made about 70, following the data of late November, 2008, 150 employees of the country’s financial-banking sector had passed our trainings.

The financial market participants demonstrate great interests towards training programs on marketing and advertisement policy, service skills and human resource management. They also actively participate in courses to get ready for qualification tests, as well as in trainings on tax legislation and the labor code.

If we talk about the level of involvement by financial institutions, approximately 95% of commercial banks and about 40% of credit organizations are our customers. Among them more active participation is demonstrated by “Armswissbank”, “Inecobank”, “Cascade Bank”, “Converse Bank”, “HSBC Bank Armenia” and “Aregak” UCO.

What concerns insurance companies, one can point to only singular cases of insurers’ participation in our trainings. I believe that this is related to reorganization of insurance services’ market, and with the lapse of time, insurers will also replenish our customer base.

- What is the method for composing topic directions of trainings?

- The process of training product elaboration is based on the assessment of requirements in a particular sector, which is revealed in the process of our research. In particular, in 2007, we realized on-line and personal surveys for banks, credit organizations and insurance organizations, which aimed at revealing the most burning topics to work out training programs. Besides, we also realized a pilot program of a survey among particular target groups of potential customers of financial institutions.

As a result of the research, we revealed that the majority of the polled focus attention on the problems of customer service quality. To this end, we elaborated a new corporate training product – “The art of customer service – development of skills”. Recently, we realized training on this topic by the order of one of the banks.

“Triodos Facet” a Dutch consulting company renders us assistance in elaboration of training and consulting programs, targeted to the financial market. Our cooperation with this company has a history of 15 years, and this year we consolidated our contacts by an agreement on exclusive cooperation. The given agreement will allow us using the experience and the skills of “Triodos Facet” Company’s shareholder – “Triodos” bank, which has a reputation of a social investor and strong positions in the sphere of microfinancing.

During the recent visit of “Triodos Facet” Company’s Head to Armenia, a number of meetings took place with representatives of organizations, involved in the sphere of microcrediting, aiming at elaboration of target training and consulting products for this segment of the financial market.

- Is there a demand in the market for focused (narrow specialization) training products?

- Yes , we are working on the list of new training programs, planned for the next year on the following topic directions: credit and credit risks assessment, operations with securities, forward and futures operations, leasing services, internal audit in banks, mobile banking activity, IT-security, etc.

We plan to also introduce new training products in the sphere of marketing, management, accounting, tax and labor legislation.

- Who is involved in the teaching staff of BSC?

- The trainings are realized by permanent teachers of our company, as well as by invited specialists. We actively cooperate with “Paradigma-Armenia” Company in organizing courses on tax and labor legislation.

Trainings are also realized at the participation of foreign specialists – experts from the Dutch “Triodos Facet” Company, the Russian “Zharkin and Partners” branding company, Ukrainian training-consulting “Business Solutions” Company, in which, by the way, representatives of the financial market take active participation.

Going back to the beginning of our talk, I would like to note that we pay great attention to the increase of professional preparedness of our employees. In particular, in the course of recent three years our specialists have been passing retraining in Management University of Cyprus.