IE Masters in Finance students take part in microfinance project in Ghana

The key objective of the trip is to gauge the impact of the different models used by microfinance institutions to combat poverty. In order to achieve this  the project participants, all students from IE Business School's Master in Advanced Finance and Executive Master in Financial Management - met with collaborating African microfinance institutions, the Microfinance Unit of Ghana's Central Bank, and representatives of key Ghanaian organizations in the field, to hold in-depth discussions about the business environment for microfinance, and to pinpoint the challenges facing the sector in the light of new regulations.

This was the second trip to Ghana organized by FinancIEros Sin Fronteras in recent months, aimed at establishing new contacts with representatives of the different banks it will be working with to run management education programs. In May of next year members of the FinancIEros Sin Fronteras team will return to Ghana to work with Ghana's Central Bank to produce programs for members of the bank's microfinance unit and for managers from GHAMFIN (Ghana Microfinance Network), ASSFIN, (Association of Financial NGOs) and the FNGOs themselves. They will also be meeting with Ghana's Ministry of Finance and personnel from the Department of Statistics of the country's Ministry of Finance to garner information and draft reports using updated data on Ghana's microfinance sector and its impact on citizens and the Ghanaian economy in general.

The IE Business School's Masters in Finance program portfolio is comprised by the Master in Finance, the Master in Advanced Finance, the Executive Master en Finanzas and the Global Master in Finance, a blended program that includes onsite classes in Madrid and London. The IE Business School Masters in Finance programs offer 200 subjects in specialized fields, including non-bank funding options, Islamic finance, and microfinance, making the programs unique in the market. The methodology employed by the program is eminently practical, employing learning processes that include investment competitions, portfolio management in real time using Bloomberg's Zoologic platform to learn how to use financial applications for investment banking, and MatLab for programming fixed income.

The students of IE's Masters in Finance round off the learning process in New York, where they visit leading US investment banks and hedge funds, meet with senior finance executives and find out the inner workings of the NY stock exchange. In the field of research, IE Business School has agreements such as that between IE's Center for Islamic Finance and Saudi Arabia's King Abdulaziz University, while IE experts have their work published in academic journals that include Journal of Finance.