Training on Financial Markets and Instruments in Moscow

At the request of the Bank of Russia, the IMF Institute for Capacity Development and the Joint Vienna Institute (JVI) delivered a one-week course on Financial Markets and Instruments at the Bank of Russia Headquarters in Moscow, December 2 - 6, 2019. The training was a condensed version of the well-known two-week IMF course on the same topic, designed to familiarize participants with advanced financial instruments like forwards, futures, swaps, and options.

Participants were from the Bank of Russia, ministries of the Russian Federation, and staff members from the central banks of some member countries of the Eurasian Union (Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic) as well as Uzbekistan.

Lectures introduced the underlying theory, and workshops and case studies allowed participants to apply the techniques introduced. What, for example, are the pros and cons of the different methods for evaluating credit risk? What policy challenges are associated with building repo markets and what needs to be done to make sure that the benefits of securitization do not come at the expense of higher risks to financial stability?


To reinforce the region-specific dimension of the course, Bank of Russia staff contributed to the training seminar with guest lectures on, e. g., development of Russian Financial Markets planned through 2021 and recent Russian legislation on securitization, project financing, and structural instruments.

The standard two-week version of the Financial Markets and Instruments course will be offered twice this year at the JVI, January 27 - February 7, 2020, and July 20 - 31, 2020. The application deadline for the second course is March 27, 2020.

Reiner Martin, Lead Economist, JVI