Many foreign banking institutes want to import our higher standards of qualification. So why, SIMON THOMPSON wonders, isn’t the drive for professionalism at the top of our own regulators’ agenda?

Among the many delightful surprises of life inside this venerable organisation are the recurring reminders of the enormous goodwill there is for the world’s oldest professional banking institute. It’s both humbling and rewarding to see how widely the Chartered Banker Institute is regarded as a leading standard-setter for banking education.

This happened again at the recent World Congress of Banking Institutes in the Bahamas. Representatives from both Ghana and Nigeria, for example, told us they wanted to find ways of aligning their qualifications with what we do.

Last month, we met colleagues from the Malaysian Institute on much the same mission. We’re providing ‘outsourced’ qualification and examination programmes for Jamaica and the Bahamas. And we’re helping launch or revise the Certificate and Diploma level programmes for the very large banker populations of both Egypt and Pakistan. The long-established Hong Kong Institute of Bankers already teaches some of our modules so its members can ‘top up’ as Chartered Bankers. We also have some 400 Chartered Bankers qualified through the Irish Institute of Bankers.

I can’t help contrasting this lively international interest with our experience of the drive for professionalism in this country. It’s growing here certainly, but comparatively slowly and without much overt encouragement from our regulators.

What’s striking is that, in most other countries, large proportions of bankers are expected to have relevant qualifications. And I find it, I confess, really quite an odd state of affairs that, in so many of these regulated countries, the institutes are coming to us to ask about higher standards of qualification which they perceive we’re offering, when it’s by no means top of our own regulators’ agenda.

It’s a legacy, I suppose, of the ‘light touch’ regime which everyone is now scrambling to replace. But, in the welter of more intrusive prudential regulation now being visited upon banks, there’s little about enhancing our industry’s standards of ethical behaviour and professional competence.

Dare we wonder if there’s an Eastern promise, perhaps, in the appointment of Martin Wheatley as chief executive of the new Financial Conduct Authority from next year? He comes here from the Hong Kong Securities & Futures Commission. It not only supports the Hong Kong Institute of Bankers, but also very strongly encourages, and in some cases mandates, its bankers to hold that Institute’s qualifications.

Back to Regulars contents
Back to Magazine contents