The Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) has reiterated its efforts in deepening competencies in the banking industry through innovations and strategic partnerships.
Bayo Olugbemi, president/ Chairman of the Council, said this during the presentation of certificates of accreditation to some bank academies, tertiary institutions, and Educational Training Service Providers (ETSPs) in Lagos.
Certificates were presented to 17 Educational Training Service Providers and two bank academies.
The event brought to a total of 85 numbers of ETSPs and 21 bank academies respectively. In particular, the accreditation of the academies would enable their graduates to secure exemptions thereby facilitating their completion of the examinations.
For the records, he said linkage arrangements would be executed with the 11 tertiary institutions.
“It is not only another step in our efforts to enhance the competencies of the practitioners in the banking, but it is also a further manifestation of the mandate of the Institute as the Sole Accreditation Agency for the implementation of the Competency Framework in the banking industry,” he said.
He admitted that the benefits of accreditation are currently being enjoyed. These benefits include but are not limited to the following: assurance that the programmes have met international best practices, and recognition of the concerned programmes.
Other benefits are the relevance of the concerned programmes, improved quality, and consistency of the concerned programmes, provision of a learning pathway, and increase in the knowledge and skills base of the staff in the industry.
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A critical and extensive assessment of the impact of the ETSPs, he noted were conducted last year. Several insights were thrown up by the research conducted after three years of the implementation of the competency framework include: quality of faculty engaged by ETSPs has improved post accreditation.
Quality of course contents of training programmes has tremendously improved. Improvement in the impact of training programmes on staff productivity, and reduction in the number of ETSPs conducting programmes in the banking industry.
Overall, he said the accreditation has a positive impact on the quality of ETSPs and their training programmes.
However, “the feedback we have is that the ETSPs, for one reason or the other, engage faculties other than those accredited for the training programmes. We will, henceforth, not allow this as the banks will be requested to forward to the Institute the faculty used for each programme,” Olugbemi said.
“It is pertinent to mention that the agreement with these institutions is not limited to the Banking and Finance Programmes. It has been extended to cover Accountancy, Business Administration, Economics, Marketing and Similar programmes in the Faculty of Education,” Olugbemi added.
