The Financial Academy has launched the "Professional Certificate in Skills Framework Practices," the Kingdom's first specialized certificate in financial skills frameworks, aimed at empowering HR professionals to leverage skills as a strategic driver for business execution and organizational performance.

The program explores different types of skills — behavioral and technical — along with the mechanisms for assessing and developing them, and how to effectively integrate them across various HR practices, including talent acquisition, performance management, and organizational development.

The program targets several key objectives, most notably: understanding competencies and their application in driving business strategy, recognizing the strategic value of competencies in enhancing performance, and differentiating between behavioral and technical competencies. It also covers how to identify, assess, and develop both competency types through their application across HR processes, align competency frameworks with the Financial Academy's Financial Skills Framework, define the roles of HR and business units in sustaining competency adoption, and develop an action plan for implementation.

The Financial Academy recently launched the "Financial Skills Framework" (Rakeeza), designed to enable organizations and individuals to develop professional capabilities and align skills with the actual requirements of job roles in the financial sector. The Framework includes the "Financial Skills Dictionary," a comprehensive reference for skills linked to job roles across four key sectors: Banking, Capital Markets, Insurance, and Financing.

The Framework covers 160 skills distributed across 54 job families and 275 job roles, divided into two main categories: technical competencies and behavioral competencies. Each skill encompasses five proficiency levels: Developing, Supporting, Applying, Leading, and Shaping — contributing to the development of clear career pathways, supporting HR practices, and enhancing the efficiency of national talent in the financial sector.

The Financial Academy is an independent legal and administrative entity, organizationally linked to the Chairman of the Capital Market Authority Board. It is dedicated to qualifying, developing, and advancing human capital in the financial sector by enhancing the knowledge, capabilities, skills, and professional culture of those working within it — including executive leadership and board members of financial sector entities — while contributing to the development of best professional practices. The Academy serves all entities across the financial sector: banking, financing, insurance, and the capital market.