Financial Instruments Course

This course is an introduction to Financial Instruments. It is an introduction course for bank employees, who keep relations with corporate and SME clients. The course aims to provide tools for the initial client contact, to determine whether a treasury specialist is needed for supporting the client in finding alternatives to hedge FX or interest rate risk.

The course first discusses Financial Markets in general and gives a broad overview of its submarkets. Next, the different departments will be described, followed by general differences between exchange brokerage and OTC trading and cash instruments versus derivatives.

The next three topics will discuss the commonly used instruments in financial markets; Rates (money markets and fixed income), Foreign Exchange (FX spot, FX forwards and FX swaps) and Derivatives (FRA, IRS, FX options and Interest rate options). Explanations are conceptual, meant to give a broad understanding of the use of these instruments for companies.

The target group are all employees that have contact with SME and corporate clients, such as relationship managers, finance specialists, or cash management specialists.