ISFB Insight
Continuing Education|ISFB Alumni
A comprehensive view of banking in support of complex projects: Yulia Brovun’s insights on the ISFB Staff and Support Certificate
April 20, 2026
In many organizations, staff and support functions play a decisive role in ensuring consistency, reliability, and organizational transformation. They require the ability to understand the entire system, coordinate diverse stakeholders, and translate multiple challenges into concrete solutions. It is precisely this approach that underpins the ISFB Certificate in Staff and Support.
The next session of the program will begin on May 11. This provides an opportunity to reflect on the benefits of this training through a review of her experience. As a Project Manager at Edmond de Rothschild, Yulia Brovun completed this certificate program to consolidate, contextualize, and formalize her experience. In this interview, she discusses the value of a cross-functional perspective on banking operations and the importance of being able to connect business, regulatory, technological, and organizational challenges when managing complex projects.
Yulia Brovun, what motivated you to take this course?
This certificate was a natural next step in my career: after holding various roles and positions in the financial sector, I wanted to organize and formalize the comprehensive understanding of how banking works that I had developed through practical experience.
Having worked in various settings, I also wanted to deepen my understanding of the Swiss banking sector—a goal that this program fully met.
Committing to a program like this requires a significant investment. How was your initiative received and supported within your professional circle?
This program represents a concrete commitment: fourteen days of training spread out over several months, to be undertaken alongside a demanding professional workload. It required meticulous planning, particularly to balance class schedules with the intensive phases of my projects.
My employer has supported my efforts, as they place a real emphasis on skill development and continuing education. This support has been invaluable—not only in practical terms, but also as recognition of my commitment to growing in my cross-functional role.
What specific lessons did you take away from this certificate program, and how has this training improved the way you perform your job?
This certification reinforced and formalized an approach I had developed in my work: bridging the gap between business stakeholders and technical and support teams, navigating regulatory, security, IT, and organizational challenges, while keeping strategic objectives and the impacts on all stakeholders in mind.
The program also encouraged participants to take a step back and consider how a bank operates as a whole—a broader perspective that goes beyond day-to-day operations and informs strategic thinking when managing complex projects.
Interactions with peers from diverse backgrounds, working in different banking environments and roles, as well as the expertise of the speakers—all of whom are active professionals in the sector—proved to be an invaluable experience, offering valuable insights from multiple perspectives and a viewpoint grounded in real-world experience.
Since the program ended, what specific lessons or new insights have you been able to apply in your work?
These experiences have led to a more structured and systematic approach to managing my projects, which are inherently complex and multifaceted—they simultaneously involve business, regulatory, security, and IT considerations, with numerous stakeholders to coordinate.
The training has strengthened my ability to identify these dependencies as early as the scoping phase, to structure governance appropriately, and to ensure consistency across the various aspects of the project throughout its lifecycle.
It has also strengthened my ability to connect business challenges with their operational implications—which is central to my role as a Project Manager in an international private banking environment.
For what type of specialist do you think this certificate is particularly relevant today?
This certificate is particularly well-suited for professionals who operate at the intersection of multiple roles—such as cross-functional project managers, business managers, or strategic support specialists—for whom coordination, influencing others without formal authority, and a big-picture perspective are key competencies.
It also addresses a real need among professionals from other fields who wish to ground their practice in a deeper understanding of how a financial institution operates in all its aspects. In an era of digital transformation and increasing regulatory pressure, this cross-functional perspective is more than ever a key differentiator.
© Institut Supérieur de Formation Bancaire (ISFB). All rights reserved.
The analyses and content published by the ISFB may be quoted or reproduced in part, provided that the source is clearly mentioned. Any full or substantial reproduction of this article in another medium or format is subject to the prior written authorization of the ISFB. In order to facilitate reading and without any intention of discrimination, the masculine gender is generally used, in accordance with the grammatical rule that allows it to be used as a neutral value to refer to a group of people comprising both men and women. This publication is intended for ISFB members and their employees in Switzerland, as well as anyone interested in finance in Switzerland. It is not intended to be read or distributed in any jurisdiction where its distribution would be prohibited.
