Malaysian-based institution offers masters degree in central banking

HONG KONG: The work of central banking has become ever more complicated since the global financial crisis ushered in an era of unconventional policy tools a decade ago.

Now the Kuala Lumpur-based Asia School of Business is launching a full-time Master of Central Banking degree to help meet the challenges.

Aimed at mid-career central bank officials, the year-long residential programme, slated to begin next summer, will include six weeks of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The bill: US$88,000, including travel and accommodation.

Its website says the programme is “designed to nurture central bankers for a future of fast-changing financial markets and an increasingly digitalized world.”

The curriculum includes monetary policy, financial stability, reserve management, digital technology and crisis management, among other topics.

“What we are doing is something that is obsessively focused on central banking, all aspects of it,” programme director Eli Remolona said.

The programme has received expressions of interest from around the world, according to Remolona, who formerly was chief Asia-Pacific representative at the Bank for International Settlements and before that worked 14 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

“We are trying to offer a short cut to the process of developing leaders in the central bank,” he said.

“We want the graduates to go back to the central bank and hit the ground running.”

Programme advisers include Zeti Aziz, former governor of Bank Negara Malaysia; Robert Merton, MIT academic and Nobel Laureate in economics; and former central bank governors from Argentina, Australia, Chile, Cyprus, Indonesia, Ireland, Philippines and Thailand.

The Asia School of Business was launched in 2015 in collaboration with Bank Negara Malaysia and the MIT Sloan School of Management, according to its website.