11th Financial Experts Days: Identifying quality standards for sustainable and impactful trainings

On the 18th and 19th of March 2019, ADG and AFC invited their long-standing international experts and trainers to the 11th Financial Experts Days at Montabaur Castle, ADG’s head office in Germany. This year’s Financial Expert Day was organized under the theme “Identifying quality standards for sustainable and impactful trainings”.

For the success of most international projects jointly managed by AFC and ADG, training and capacity-building measures play a crucial role as the training quality often affects a project’s impact. The FED provided a unique opportunity to exchange on quality criteria of various training aspects between the 30 participants of AFC’s and ADG’s financial sector in-house staff, long-term experts from ongoing projects as well as selected training experts.

On the first day, the participants recognised that trainings in the banking sector require a tailor-made approach, which takes the principles of adult learning into consideration. Designing impactful trainings for banking professionals means that trainings should not only deliver technical knowledge but should empower the trainees to apply these skills in their daily work in financial institutions. The participants insisted that trainings following a traditional classroom and lecture approach would unavoidably fail in achieving any sustainable impact.

Through workshop sessions, the participants of the Financial Expert Day developed standards and criteria that will be incorporated in a Code of Conduct / Style Guide for Trainers to ensure high training quality. Discussion included how to mix training methods and media, how to visualize PowerPoint presentations and flipcharts, as wells as methods to keep motivation high throughout the training.

The second day started with a presentation of ADG’s and AFC’s blended learning approach, complementing our tried and tested on-site training approach with web-based training elements, allowing for an even greater training impact while reducing costs for our clients and donors. This learning approach will ensure that the web-based training elements are modularized, designed according to the responsive design principles and allow for maximum interaction between trainer and trainees.

Another session covered a topic which is often neglected when preparing and implementing trainings. What is the training’s impact once the trainers have left the training and how can the impact be quantified and measured? Thanks to our experts’ and partners’ vast practical experience, we elaborated an approach on how to define a baseline, what to measure and how to follow-up. The results of this session will be incorporated in ADG’s and AFC’s training impact monitoring approach.

As in the previous years, the 11th Financial Expert Day benefitted substantially from the practitioners’ expertise and experience and will contribute to AFC’s and ADG’s refined training approach. We would therefore like to thank our experts and partners and are looking forward to a successful cooperation in the future.  

For further details please contact Holger Christ (holger.christ [at] afci.de).