This year, the teams from ICEF and HSE emerged as the local stage winners, showing excellent research and presentation skills. Now these two teams will travel to Jordan, where the EMEA Regional Final will be held on April 1-2.

With the ever increasing globalization of financial markets, Islamic finance is gradually gaining recognition throughout the world. As wealth in Muslim-majority countries is expected to increase in the future, the role of Islamic finance, which attempts to reconcile theology and modern portfolio theory, is also expected to grow.

To find out more about this problem, CFA Association Russia held a joint workshop with EY Academy of Business focusing on cognitive flexibility. Victoria Karyakina, a leading soft-skills coach from EY Academy of Business, held a 2-hour presentation, which analyzed the nature of our unconscious biases, discussed their negative consequences and gave advice on how to become aware of these preconceived notions.

CFA Russia invited an expert from Switzerland, Dr. Guiseppe Ballocchi, CFA, Partner at Alpha Governance Partners and a member of CFA Institute’s Future of Content Council, to talk about future trends and scenarios in the finance industry.

A speaker, Katerina Nazarova, one of EY’s coaches on emotional intelligence (EI), had an engaging conversation with the guests and shared some of her ideas on how to improve leadership skills and personal brand for women working in the corporate world.

The Bank of Russia published an official document recommending all financial organizations in the Russian securities market to come up with their own code of ethics based on the CFA Institute Standards of Practice Handbook.

During 2019, CFA Russia organized a few GIPS-related events, spreading the word about the advantages of getting verified. Slowly but surely, the work paid off with the first company agreeing to go through a GIPS verification early next year.

A market momentum around ESG is rising around the world. To discuss these issues in detail, on December 16, in partnership with Deloitte, CFA Association Russia held an evening seminar focusing on the role of ESG in the assignment of credit ratings.

In 2019, CFA Russia welcomed just over 100 new members. To officially celebrate this, CFA Russia held the 2019 Charter Award ceremony on December 17 at Moscow Exchange (MoEx).

The event featured two experts – Vladimir Nikulin, CFA, a portfolio manager of the Lighthouse Capital investment fund, and Karolina Shalimova, a senior tax advisor at Mazars.

Discussion highlights included a number of interesting themes, such as the future role of AI in the investment profession, predictions on the Russian ETF market, average spending on ETF in VTB Capital Investments and Sberbank Asset Management, some of the pros and cons of owning ETFs and few other things.

The course has all 19 study sessions and a full financial calculator tutorial. The total length of the course is around 60 hours of educational videos in the Russian language.

CFA Association Russia held a fall CFA Level 1 Mock exam on November 23. The society had the highest turnout rate in years.

In one hour-long video, Alexey Debelov, CFA, a long-time Research Challenge volunteer, who served both as a team mentor and judge, talked about the details of the student competition. Alexey shares his own experience on how to form a successful team, work with industry mentors, prepare research and write a high-quality report.

The 2019 – 2020 Research Challenge will feature 34 teams from 26 universities from across Russia and the CIS.

The video focuses on GIPS and the development of the standards in Russia, and seeks to raise awareness among local asset management players as part of CFA Russia's role as a GIPS sponsor in the country.

Moody's senior experts gave a thorough presentation and analysis on the state of Russian banks, as well as how and why the company's sovereign credit rating on Russia changed in February.

Leaders with high emotional intelligence can motivate teams and boost their productivity by as much as 20 percent.

On June 14, CFA Russia held a social event at the Totibadze art gallery to thank all the volunteers involved in the Research Challenge.

About 150 CFA candidates sat for the Schweser Mock Exam held at Moscow State University.