Institute of Finance, Banking & Insurance (IFBI) is an NIIT Venture with equity participation by ICICI Bank. It is the coming together of two leaders in their respective fields acknowledging the need and the opportunity of the times.

IFBI reflects the strengths of both these parents. NIIT's expertise in the design and conduct of distributed non-formal education and its experience of manpower-development for India's IT sector, are combined with ICICI Bank's domain-knowledge across the spectrum of financial services and its leadership status within the banking sector. IFBI offers an unbeatable combination for the student, and the industry.

The changing face of the Financial Sector
The domestic retail banking market is expanding with annual revenues expected to more than double to US$ 16.5 billion by 2010 from about US$ 6.4 billion at present, according to a McKinsey study. While the overall banking industry is growing at 20%, New Private Sector banks are growing at 40%. Leading players like ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank have witnessed massive growth. Today India's banking sector generates 2.5% of GDP and employs 900,000 people. With all reforms it could generate 7.5% of GDP and employ 1,500,000 people.

Insurance sector is another high growth area. ICICI Prudential, the leading private sector player, has over 27,000 employees today. It is expected that the private sector players will continue to garner more market share. Innovative products like ULIP (Unit Linked Insurance plans) have helped the cause of greater penetration into the Indian market. The non-life sector also has many private players.

The performance of Indian Stock Markets is well-known. The Indian markets have out-performed most of the other major regional markets in recent years. The BSE Sensex has achieved various milestones like reaching 20,000 in record time. Though there could be adverse global developments from time to time, India is expected to continue on the growth trajectory.

The manpower challenges of quality and quantity
Recognising that the limits to growth of this sector in India may come from scarcity of talent, one focus area of IFBI is to groom entry-level professionals in Banking and Insurance. Re-skilling existing professionals in the Financial Services sector - who are being overwhelmed by reforms, technology advancements and changes in attitude & approach in this sector - is another focus area for IFBI.

Enhancing the skills of existing practitioners by providing them knowledge in emerging areas like capital and commodities markets is another dimension of professional development that IFBI intends to pursue.

Keeping pace with economic growth, regulatory reforms and overall modernization, the keywords in today's Financial Services organizations are growth, marketing, efficiency, technology, customer and competition. The New Private Sector Banks (a Reserve Bank of India term denoting 8 modern private-sector banks) and Private-Sector Insurance companies, are the pioneers of this change, though all others have adopted the same mantra. The financial services professional of today reflects the same changes - in addition to being an expert in his domain, s/he is today thoroughly hands-on application-oriented, technology-savvy and customer-friendly.

IFBI's solution to the challenges
IFBI's offerings are designed in this context of modern-day Banking, Insurance and Financial Services by developing competencies on 4 dimensions - domain, technology, application and customer-service. These 4 competencies are the defining characteristics of IFBI's programs of study and of students and professionals groomed by it.