ICICI Direct Centre for Financial Learning (ICFL), an initiative of ICICI Securities, and Xavier School of Management, Jamshedpur (XLRI) announced on October 8 a strategic knowledge partnership to offer a Management Development Programme (MDP) and a Long Duration Programme (LDP) specialising in finance.
ICFL and XLRI have come together to offer these certificate courses through the online mode of virtual interactive classroom training. The programme will aim at honing financial skills of working professionals with at least 2 years of experience, according to Prof Ashis K. Pani, Associate Dean (VIL), XLRI
“This tie-up will help interaction between student and industry experts,” Pani said.
Plans are afoot to explore opportunities on introducing similar courses for freshers.
According to Vineet Arora, EVP- Product and Distribution, ICICI Securities, while XLRI brings its expertise (curriculum design, quality of faculty, content development), ICFL will bring a practitioner’s perspective.
“Young working professionals need simple modes of learning finance. We are looking forward to a successful partnership which will help take up finance as a career option,” Arora said.
Course and content
Currently, out of the two programmes, the ‘eMDP’ (management development programme) is a short duration one covering financial analysis techniques and equity research, financial instruments, markets and investment choices, data analysis among others. The program fees will be ₹25,000–100,000 per student.
According to Neeraj Joshi, Head, ICFL, four courses – one each on financial research, financial modelling, finance for manager (those who do not have a finance background) and financial investments – will be introduced initially.
Courses under the LDP – that ranges from six months to one year in finance or related area and will be priced between ₹150,000 and ₹300,000 – are yet to be worked out.
Four XLRI professors will deliver the course from a studio at the XLRI campus in Jamshedpur using a Virtual Interactive Learning environment (virtual classrooms where two-way communication will be possible). ICFL-authorised learning centres will enable the delivery of the programmes.
Currently six such authorised centres will be coming up – one each in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Pune, Kolkata and Bengaluru. In the coming days, ICFL will look to add more centres across Tier-I and Tier-II cities and towns.
More such courses will be developed keeping in mind the market requirements. At least seven more courses are expected to be launched over the coming one year, of which some three-odd will be long duration programmes.