Exhibitor

A Ministerial Directive in 1979 created the Specific Council for Vocational Training (Banking Sector) which is still in place today

Originally named the Bahrain Bankers Training Center, the now BIBF was inaugurated in March 1981.

Specifically for Banks its first year had 450 participants. By 1988 this had grown to just over 1800 per annum

In 1988 the name was changed to the Bahrain Institute of Banking and Finance. By 2001 the numbers had grown to over 6000 people per annum.

In 2001 and 2007, the BIBF logo underwent changes to better reflect its standing as Bahrain’s pre-eminent training provider. By the end of the decade well over 15,000 participants had come through BIBF premises (per annum). In the last three years alone there has been a 40% increase in participants and an expectation we will reach 20,000 participants for the 2011 year alone.

BIBF today has well over 300 programmes on offer. We train not only in Banking but Accounting and IT, Insurance, Islamic Banking, Leadership and Management disciplines (including Marketing) and have a Centre dedicated to Academic programs and Executive development.

We do morning courses, courses as requested by clients, professional qualifications, diplomas and masters qualifications. These are done both locally and internationally. Our faculty is diverse and international.

We service the entire Bahrain Banking and Insurance sector (which we define as members) and have hundreds of non-Bahrain organisations as well. Details of who we have worked with can be sourced from the 2009 Annual Report. Of note is that while we service the financial sector, our members still come here by choice.

BIBF is almost unique in the world. While we are named an Institute, we are much more than that. In addition to the above we do Research, offer professional coaching and deliver psychometric assessments. We are neither a university. For us it makes us feel very proud to be a part of such a unique proposition.

Another component of this is ownership. We are not a private company. We are not for profit. We are not governmental but we are a part of the CBB and our chairman is the Central Bank Governor. We define ourselves as semi-governmental with an autonomous twist. We have a Board made up of leading figures within the Public and Private sector and the BIBF Director (who is on the Board) has a Management team which delivers on both the Strategic and Operations deliverables as agreed by the Board on an annual basis

Our partnerships are leading across most disciplines. (Again these can be sourced from the website home page under Partners and Affiliates).

We are increasingly being recognised outside of Bahrain. We have been for the last three years been recognised as the Best Global training provider for Islamic Finance. In July 2010 we were also recognised as the Best Global training provider for Takaful (Insurance).