The Bankers Association of the Philippines (BAP), who chairs the ASEAN Bankers Association (ABA) Permanent Committee on Banking Education, presented their banking education booking platform at the 49th ASEAN Banking Council (ABC) Meeting held in Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia.
The first of its kind, the BAP Trainings Program Booking Portal allows employees from BAP member banks to access various specialized course offerings on the latest skills, practices, tools, techniques and trends in banking, which the BAP believes will improve the quality of bank services.
As chairman of the Permanent Committee on Banking Education, BAP developed the platform as proof of concept (PoC) based on ABA’s plan to create a cross-border banking education platform for the entire ASEAN region. The booking portal was initially created to serve as a clearing house of all the training demands requested by bank officers and personnel.
“Our training platform serves as a repository on banking-related education and training service providers, subject matter experts, and programs that member banks can explore to see what best suits their needs,” said BAP Managing Director Benjamin Castillo. “These courses will now be more available and accessible to them, as they only need to visit one site for it.”
The BAP booking platform will offer training programs from partner institutions such as the Bankers Institute of the Philippines (BAIPHIL) and Ateneo CCE. Class categories include: Finance and audit; governance, legal, and compliance; IT and security; products, branch operations, and management, and risk management.
“We are motivated to provide this service to our member banks, as we are committed to pursue higher standards within the banking industry. These courses were selected to enhance their capacity to adapt to banking trends worldwide,” said Castillo. “We also hope that the local success of the platform can eventually be replicated in the region as well.”
The training platform was presented at the ABC’s committee meeting for Banking Education, which was attended by representatives from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Other agenda put forward during the council meeting included fostering interoperable QR payment codes across South East Asia to boost region-wide financial activity, digitalizing cross-border trading practices and process, and capacity-building across ASEAN to promote sustainable and responsible financing.
The ASEAN Banking Council Meeting was hosted by the Association of Banks in Cambodia, and was joined by over 150 senior banking executives from ten (10) ASEAN economies.
