In a period when thousands of highly qualified finance professionals have lost their jobs worldwide and the students of Finance almost everywhere are concerned about their career prospects, in Armenia the employment market dynamics seem to follow a rather different path.
According to Mr. Vardan Markosian, Director of Yerevan-based VGM Partners, an investment consulting firm, Armenia lacks qualified finance professionals, and this shortage is a major hurdle to the development of the country’s financial sector.
Hetq daily (in Armenian) reports that Mr. Markosian shared his opinion on the occasion of the presentation of a study conducted by Emerging Markets Group concerning the Armenian financial sector. Emerging Markets Group is a U.S.-based international consultancy with activities in more than 60 countries. It is currently working on several projects in Armenia, including primary healthcare reforms and strategies to improve the social protection system.
The study reveals that many financial organizations in Armenia are willing to support continuing education and retraining of their employees but lack the required infrastructure and systems.
Also, it seems that the formal education level of the workforce in the financial services sector is acceptable - more than 70 percent have postsecondary education, 37 percent hold Masters’ degrees and 7 percent PhDs. They, however, lack language skills [I assume other than Armenian and Russian].
The institutions of higher education, on their part, do not offer programs in tune with the requirements of the fast-changing financial sector. In many cases, the programs are not up-to-date or not sufficiently specialized. The institutions have claimed that students would not be able to afford the tuition fees if they, the schools, were to offer more specialized programs.
To narrow the skills gap in the financial sector, Emerging Markets Group has presented three broad proposals:
1. Design and conduct retraining programs for local instructors of Finance by foreign experts.
2. Organize special training and retraining programs for current employees, jointly run by educational institutions and financial organizations.
3. Capacity enhancement at institutional level in business schools that offer Finance programs.
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According to Mr. Vardan Markosian, Director of Yerevan-based VGM Partners, an investment consulting firm, Armenia lacks qualified finance professionals, and this shortage is a major hurdle to the development of the country’s financial sector.
Hetq daily (in Armenian) reports that Mr. Markosian shared his opinion on the occasion of the presentation of a study conducted by Emerging Markets Group concerning the Armenian financial sector. Emerging Markets Group is a U.S.-based international consultancy with activities in more than 60 countries. It is currently working on several projects in Armenia, including primary healthcare reforms and strategies to improve the social protection system.
The study reveals that many financial organizations in Armenia are willing to support continuing education and retraining of their employees but lack the required infrastructure and systems.
Also, it seems that the formal education level of the workforce in the financial services sector is acceptable - more than 70 percent have postsecondary education, 37 percent hold Masters’ degrees and 7 percent PhDs. They, however, lack language skills [I assume other than Armenian and Russian].
The institutions of higher education, on their part, do not offer programs in tune with the requirements of the fast-changing financial sector. In many cases, the programs are not up-to-date or not sufficiently specialized. The institutions have claimed that students would not be able to afford the tuition fees if they, the schools, were to offer more specialized programs.
To narrow the skills gap in the financial sector, Emerging Markets Group has presented three broad proposals:
1. Design and conduct retraining programs for local instructors of Finance by foreign experts.
2. Organize special training and retraining programs for current employees, jointly run by educational institutions and financial organizations.
3. Capacity enhancement at institutional level in business schools that offer Finance programs.
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