ABN AMRO BANK’S PROGRAM STARTS AT UNIBANK

Noyan Tapan
Feb 13 2007

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 13, NOYAN TAPAN. Representatives of the international
bank ABN AMRO were recently on a working visit to Armenia with the
aim of installing the program risk management processes improvement
program.

Unibank was reserved the right to implement the program as a result
of the tender held in 2006. The choice of participants was done in
two phases: summary of questionnaires and interviews with banks’
management. Program’s executive, chief advisor of the Risk Advisory
Service of the ABN AMRO Bank Lloyd Rolston said that the main purpose
of the program is introduction of international experience of risk
management in the Armenian bank, which will make the bank competitive
and reliable for local and foreign partners. This 14-month program
envisages implementation of a number of complex measures aimed at
introduction of new systems in the bank and improvement of the current
ones. Particularly, under the program Unibank envisages to create
a risk management department which will implement and control risk
management and their use in bank instruments. It is also planned
to develop and introduce a risk management concept in the bank,
as well as the long-term strategy of management, improvement of
the system of separation of the functions of the bank’s executive
body and their control, and internal structural changes. According
to L. Rolston, advanced approaches will also be used in conducting
the personnel policy. Particularly, Unibank’s management and experts
will participate in seminars on experience exchange organized by ABN
AMRO. Frequency of expert training courses and their certification
will be doubled. Speacial attention will be paid to introduction of
the "risk culture" system in the bank. ABN AMRO is one of the biggest
banks in the world, it has 4,500 branches in 53 countries. The bank
is in 8th place by its overall assets in Europe (999 bln euros as of
September 30, 2006) and in 13th place in the world.