The Partnership delivers individual consultations and onsite visits by Treasury's specialists and World Bank experts to meet an institution’s need. RAMP is a trusted partner to members and focuses on building a governance and risk management framework that balances return objectives with prudent risk management and controls. RAMP strengthens countries’ financial stability, economic resilience, and prosperity through sound practices in reserves and public sector asset management.

The Partnership provides world-class resources in delivering advisory services, including:

RAMP engagement managers and client service teams
World Bank experts (capital markets, legal, pension & operations)
External consultants and outside specialists
Properitary software and training tools.

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Video

The World Bank RAMP's Mission & Impact (Video)

Video

Learning Together with the World Bank RAMP (Video)

Areas of Expertise

Treasury specialists act as a trusted advisor for RAMP members on a range of issues affecting public asset managers. All RAMP engagement managers have asset management experience and led the capacity-building activities with the RAMP member institution. RAMP draws on World Bank expertise across Treasury and the broader World Bank Group to assist member institutions reach their reserve management or public asset management objectives.

Governance

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Strategic Asset Allocation

Portfolio Management

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Risk Management

Operations & Accounting

COVID-19, Information Systems, and Statistics in the Middle East and North Africa

Technology & Systems

Strengthening governance and institution frameworks

We assist central bank policy makers with strengthening their institution’s governance structure through defining policy objectives and ensuring that an investment policy, investment guidelines, and a strategic asset allocation are in place. These tools help align objectives with investments and control risks within acceptable levels while targeting a competitive market return on assets.

Developing internal strategic asset allocation capabilities

We assist with building in-house capacity to develop policy proposals for strategic asset allocation and translating the SAA into replicable benchmark portfolios. RAMP provides members with proprietary in-house software, the Asset Management Workbench, to develop and stress test the SAA, and provide staff technical training on both the theory and use of the model.

Expanding internal asset management capacity

We assist fund managers with expanding asset management skills across broad fixed income sectors, including money market instruments, high grade government and agency bonds, interest rate futures, and agency mortgage-backed securities.

Providing risk management and analytics

We help develop a multi-faceted risk management function with robust quantitative and qualitative risk indicators encompassing market, credit and operational risk.

Engaging external partners

We assist with engaging external service providers, including asset managers, and global custodian and systems providers. We also help with developing capacity to manage an external asset management program.

Building legal expertise in investment transactions

We provide legal training to in-house lawyers relating to sovereign immunities and protecting central bank interests under contractual arrangements for securities lending, futures transactions, external asset manager programs and private sector custodial services.

Developing a public communications strategy

We assist with developing a communication strategy and reporting framework to provide meaningful financial reporting and address frequently asked questions on investment strategy and risk from official stakeholders, the media and the public.

Peer-to-Peer Approach

RAMP members can develop their institutional capacity in public asset management through hands-on practical experiences at the World Bank headquarters. RAMP member institution staff join Treasury specialists for in-office internships on pre-determined subjects. Below are several examples of recent internships with members.

Portfolio Management

Enhanced Indexation

Portfolio Management

Enhanced Indexation with Futures

Settlement & Operations

Fed or Global Custodian

Advisory Software & Tools

Tutorial

Introduction to the World Bank RAMP's Benchmarking Analysis Tool, BAT (Video)

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Developing a Strategic Asset Allocation with the World Bank RAMP (Video)

Asset Allocation
Benchmarking
Operational Risk
Trading Simulation
External Mgmt

The Strategic Asset Allocation Workbench Tool is one of the most essential investment decisions for public asset managers. Its purpose is to determine a portfolio’s long-term optimal profile based on the institution’s investment objectives, risk tolerance, and investment horizon. This includes deciding on key portfolio characteristics such as currency composition, duration of fixed income assets, eligible asset classes, and their optimal allocations in the portfolio. A robust quantitative assessment of the risk and return for the various asset classes and potential portfolios under forward-looking capital market assumptions is an essential input in making these decisions.
RAMP provides the Workbench Tool as a stand-alone simulation-based financial modeling tool designed to support analysts and decision makers in the strategic asset allocation process for fixed-income, equity, and multi-asset class portfolios. The tool was built with two overarching objectives: (1) to help users learn fixed income modeling and asset allocation techniques; and (2) to provide an analytical framework to generate estimates to support asset allocation decisions, provided that users have mastered Workbench’s conceptual framework and capabilities, and assumed ownership of all underlying inputs and assumptions.
The Workbench Tool provides a framework, methodology and set of quantitative tools to model fixed income and other asset classes, generate asset return projections, and optimize portfolios according to the user’s risk and return preferences and constraints. There are four modules, which are integrated within a process to generate risk and return expectations and translate these expectations into optimal asset allocation decisions in accordance with an organization’s investment policy and preferences.
The Benchmarking Assessment Tool (BAT) uses data from over 100 central banks and has 10,000-plus data points collected through RAMP’s surveys on reserve management practices. This data visualization tool enables central banks to compare practices with peers.
Watch the tutorial on how to use the Benchmarking Asessment Tool (BAT).
Using BAT, each survey respondent organization can visually compare their reserve management practices across institutions through a unique identifier. For example, a central bank can compare its responses, not only with those of the whole sample, but also with respondents in the same region with a similar reserve level and income category. As a result, decision makers easily identify the gaps that they need to address and may seek customized assistance from RAMP to address these gaps.
The Operational Risk Excel-based tool, together with the other operational risk framework elements, will support the coordination and analytical activities of the risk management function, thanks to the operationalization of the data collection process. The tool also helps with the data management process and makes the data consolidated, relevant (through the definition of key risk indicators), and expedient, fostering standardized reporting.
The risk function and other business lines will have additional reporting capabilities to validate the progress of operational risk management activities, gain confidence that risks are being adequately mitigated and that the Institution’s control environment is effectively structured.
CompassPoint is a trading simulation application used in World Bank RAMP workshops by World Bank Treasury portfolio managers. The portfolio managers believe that a hands-on approach is an effective method of teaching technically advanced concepts over the course of a one-week workshop.
The trading simulation was first introduced over 15 years ago in RAMP’s flagship workshop, Advanced Techniques in Portfolio Management. Over time, the World Bank Treasury Asset Management and Advisory Department worked together with IT services of the World Bank to develop CompassPoint, an inhouse platform that focuses on training participants in advanced portfolio management concepts through a trading simulation application.
The External Asset Managers Evaluation Excel-based tool was designed and developed to enhance the workshop participants’ understanding of various quantitative indicators. The tool uses cell-based formulas and is not driven by macros. This allows the workshop participants a practical glance to review requisite formulas and take guidance for implementation details. While it is intuitive and transparent in implementation, it is also functional.
The tool can compute many returns and risk indicators such as excess return, information ratio, tracking error, downside tracking error, and so on. It also generates statistics for accessing style and portfolio fit, and ranking managers according to certain criteria.