At Last ! I am a JAIBP Qualified !

Alhamdulilah! I have passed all the threee stages of JAIBP. It was a very nice experience while preparing and exploring various fields of banking. But there is lot more to go, because the next stage is AIBP, which is associateship of IBP. For that I have to get banking experience of atleast three years and after that I can take exams of AIBP. After AIBP one can get fellowship of IBP.

The first thing I have experienced after that, at least you can say you know something about banking. What benefits I will get after that.... I am still figuring that out. Definitely it will count in my next Performance Review, but the best thing is that through this I stayed in touch with the studies and kept my self updating.

But as its an ongoing process, so one has to keep himself updated through various sources all the time.... never get stagnant !

Numericals in the Paper of International Trade Finance and Forex Operations

If you are preparing for JAIBP exams, I recommend you to make a plan atleast three months before the exam date. Do a detail study of give syllabus outline in intial two months and in the last month you solve all the up-to-date papers of the relevant subject, which are already available on IBP website.

But don't think that the pattern of the exam will remain the same, as it is always changed from various perspectives. In the exam on Winter 2009 Int'l Trade paper there was not a single numerical. Although there were numericals in all the previous papers but this time there was not a single one. So they can always change the format, unexpectidly, so be prepared for the surprises.

Previous Kinds of Numericals

In the previous papers there are two kinds of numericals, first are the forex numericals in which you have to deal with the currency exchange rates and usually have to interpret the quoted forward rates.
The second type is of treasury positions, in which you have to handle the square, overbought and oversold position.

For the first kind of numericals I was fully prepared but for the second kind there was not a perfect prep. So I feel my self lucky that I didn't got the numericals.

ICC Publications

I have recently taken paper of International Trade Finance and Forex Operations in JAIBP and for that I have collected a lot of preparation materail. Now, after the exam I would love to share all stuff with you (I didn't got time to upload during the exams..... aaaahhhh !!!! u know exam stress).

So here are some ICC publications which are very important and should be a much read for the students of International Trade. Click on the links to open the files which are in PDF format,

Uniform Custom Practices ( UCP ) 600

Uniform Rules for Bank to Bank Reimbursement (URR) 725

Uniform Rules for Collection ( URC ) 522

Incoterms

Incoterms are International Commercial terms which are used in international trade. These terms are very important , both in international trade and for the studetns of International Trade Finance and Forex Operations - JAIBP.

In the institute of Bankers exams winter 2009 we got a complete question on Incoterms. That question contained 10 marks and we had to write thirteen incoterms and the groups in which they are categorized.

Here, I will recommend you to visit the incoterms page of wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incoterms to which I am very thankful. Its a very well written page and contains very detailed information. This also shows the diagram explaining how costs are shared as per a certain incoterm.

Keep your JAIBP result cards in your record !

Because recently a friend of mine was surprised when after two times taking the stage-II exams he was informed by IBP that he has only passed one exam in Stage-I. Although he passed two subjects and he received the result card showing that he has passed two subjects (But poor guy didn't bothered to keep the result card and roll number slips) and the Institue is saying that he never passed more than one subject.

Here I want to mention a rule of IBP that you can not take exmas of Stage-II untill you pass atleast two subjects of Stage-I and you can't appear in stage -III if you have any pending subject in stage-I.

So you all out there ! be careful and keep your result letters untill you get the degree.

An Overview of Banking Industry in Pakistan - Mid 2009

On the below mentioned link you can find a very good report on the Banking Industry in Pakistan, published by PACRA.


This report gives you an overview of the industry with the help of Grahs and Charts and you can get an idea very quickly without digging out complex text and reviews.



http://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B26cFeYyZ30UYjQyYTYxYWItY2IxZi00ODE4LWEzMGQtMmRlMDI1ZWFhODRj&hl=en

You Can Feel the recession !!!

Well ! if you can't then this means you have no feelings !

After a lot of Buzz on the whole globe we can see some significant effects of recession in Pakistani Economy especially on Financial Institutions and Banking Sector. FIs and Banks are now on a proactive stance and management is concentrating on cutting down the expenses and keeping the current position if not aiming for growth.

In reality its a hard time for both management and employees. SBP is pushing hard banks to maintains the Capital Adequacy Ration (CAR) in order to safeguard the interest of depositors, because these are the situations which could trigger a sheepwalk among the depositors even upon a rumor in the market. And such rumors are not only dangerous for individual institution but also for the whole industry. Therefore, by maintaining Capital Adequacy Ration SBP make sure that bank management has enough stake in business and they will never gonna lose their share !

Alongwith that SBP is also focusing on the portfolio health of Banks and FIs and trying to reduce the NPLs. Although, in current recession such NPLs are unavoidable and the can be said a normal thing. Or you can say that there woul be a natural percentage of NPLs in the market.

I read somewhere this quote that "if you don't have any bad loans this means that you are not lending !" So one should try and prepare to minimize these NPLs by adopting latest Risk Management techniques.

Businesses are in pressure, slow activity, high prices, political and economics conditions are adding to this recession. Government is not very much interested in tackling this recession or becoming proactive but they are concentrating more on getting aid and being paid to fight the war. But no matter how much you will get to fight the war , its always bad for economy in the end.