9 March 2021
Who is...?: Paz Navarro García, Director of Cecabank's Banking Training School and regulatory and efficiency consultancy.
How did you enter the world of training and describe your professional career path so far?
I began my professional career in the world of consultancy. Six years later, I joined Ceca where I continued to lead the management of regulatory consultancy projects for Ceca's member entities. As a result of the knowledge acquired in the execution of regulatory projects, I was given the opportunity to provide training sessions on regulatory matters to financial institutions. This is when my attraction to the world of training from the perspective of the author/teacher began, as until then I had always been very interested from the perspective of a student and due to my continuous desire not to stop learning. My arrival into the world of training was somewhat eventful, because my appointment as the new Director of Cecabank's Banking Training School occurred two days before the March 2020 confinement, which meant that we had to manage a situation that was completely unfamiliar and adapt to it in order to continue to provide the best service to our students.
In your opinion, what are the 3 current challenges faced in training and development? I would use the same concepts applicable to the digital age in which we live: excellence, usability and globality.
– The first and most important challenge is that training must be of quality. The rigour and expert knowledge of the contents to be taught must prevail. Quality training generates outstanding, highly qualified professionals (training should not be understood as a commodity, in that this would result in mediocre professionals with basic knowledge). Knowledge and the ability to learn is our greatest asset.
– Usability, the contents must have a practical application. Perhaps an even greater challenge is to make students see what the training can contribute to their professional careers and thus avoid them taking the courses simply because of regulatory or internal obligations. Whatever is reasoned and constructed is better learned than what is memorised. The use of technology provides us with new methodologies that make this possible, in a dynamic and pedagogical way through gamification, challenges, etc.
– Globality: One of the few good things to come out of this pandemic is that we have learned that online training opens up a new world of possibilities, both in terms of access to students and to teachers or speakers anywhere in the world, thus improving the level of training. Currently training can be provided anywhere and through multiple devices (access to training from anywhere in the world from the other side) via tablet, mobile phones, e-learning training, video calls, etc.
Can you describe a prominent project you have developed within the institution of which you are proud?
The creation of the school for directors or senior management. This is a premium school intended for a group that must make and approve strategic decisions in companies. This group demands very flexible training programmes in terms of how and where to undertake such training, and very specific, concise and highly rigorous content. We have introduced the training programme for the assessment of the suitability of board members which, in line with the compliance of the diversity and equality plans required by the European Central Bank, is increasing the number of women on boards and in senior management positions. Cecabank's Banking Training School is very proud to collaborate with these training programmes in order to maintain the highest level of professionalism in these programmes and, as importantly, to increase the number of women in these management groups.
What is Gref to you?
A centre for cooperation between professionals with a great collaborative environment in which priority is given to the pursuit of excellence in training with the aim of improving society through the important network of training schools that integrate it. A society is created from its foundations and these are the training of people, the more knowledge is acquired and the better people are taught to think, the more we will evolve as a society in order to improve and grow.
