VBA investment professionals celebrates its 55th anniversary by sounding the gong. The anniversary focusses on financial education, now that people are making make more financial choices themselves. Educational and financial organisations seize this development to make consumers aware of the increasing financial responsibility. For now, the various education initiatives have not been sufficiently effective. Especially young people are not sufficiently aware of the financial choices they have to make. The VBA wants its anniversary to contribute to the increasing awareness of the importance of financial education. Ultimately the VBA wants to contribute to solutions that enable people to make better financial choices.

VBA investment professionals has grown since its inception in 1961 to become the leading professional association in the Netherlands when it comes to the interests of investment professionals and their clients. The association's main objective is to maintain and improve the quality and integrity of investment professionals. The VBA has more than 1,300 members working in different disciplines within the financial world, from large banks and institutional investors to specialized investment firms and private wealth managers.

 For more information www.vbabeleggingsprofessionals.nl

The yearly Congress of DVFA will be celebrated next 31^st of March with a Conference on the very actual topic of Big Data for Finance.

The term Big Data, methods, applications and investment styles have now arrived in the financial market. The "Big" in Big Data refers to the volume of data, the speed, the compilation and the transport of data, and the range of data sources and types. Big Data can be a decisive factor for the financial industry: millions of transactions are done every day on-line. The DVFA Congress analyses:

• What approaches are more adequate for the investment or market analysis?
• What is technologically possible today and where are the limits?
• How is the Big Data approaches changing the investment analysis?

 More information on the DVFA website

An opening bell ceremony was hosted by Borsa İstanbul, on the occasion of The European Federation of Financial Analysts Societies’ (EFFAS) first Executive Committee Meeting in Turkey, in coordination with Capital Markets Professionals Association (SPP) representing Turkey at the Federation.

EFFAS SUMMER SCHOOL 2016