The Kuwait Investment Authority has always been one of the leading financial institutions in the region and one of the largest in the world. It is where all our future money is, and has been performing extremely well since its establishment, both with local investments and international ones.

I worked at the KIA for a while as a trainee six years ago, and I remember being very sad and disappointed at the state of things there. The building was extremely old and in shambles from the inside (it is in the ministries complex), people didn’t seem to be very motivated, and in general its reputation as an employer has gone down compared to the opportunities offered at most private sector companies. The website back then was a joke, even three years later (Nov 04), I remember posting about how bad the site is.

A quick look at how things are now, and you will see -

- Their offices have all been fixed up, and now it looks alot more professional! The old ministry design that was used inside has been replaced with a much more modern and businesslike design.

- The salaries have all been raised recently, which definitely helps in motivating the employees!

- The website is totally revamped, and looks really good now.

Yesterday, a colleague at work was telling me that there is a good article about the KIA on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, so I looked it up, and found a preview of it on their website, with the full article published by zawya.com.  It is a very nteresting read. While searching, I also found an article in the New Your Inquirer.

Finding all that lead me to thinking …. Is this part of a PR campaign by the KIA to increase its presence and positive image around the world? If so, is it done internally?

Its really great to see such an organization taking steps forward, and lets hope these positives changes are happening inside out!

I know that the one complain I hear from people working there is about the parliament. Basically, what I’ve heard is that they have been taking most of their time at work just replying to enquiries from parliament members instead of focusing on their core business! And most of these questions have been - “why invest in so and so and not this other investment?” or “why did you invest in something that lost?” It really is sad that they take so much time responding to questions by people who have zero knowledge about finance or investment!

So if we give all members of parliament a short course in finance, or send them on oneof the training courses that we took at the KIA, maybe the KIA can concentrate on making more money of us, and it will cover the cost of educating these ppl! Unless of course the questions are just politically motivated, which never happens in Kuwait