The Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) has presented certificates of accreditation to 19 tertiary institutions, bank academies and education training service providers (ESTPs) to deepen knowledge of modern banking.
President and Chairman of Council of the Institute, Dr. Bayo Olugbemi, at the presentation, also said, “linkage arrangements will be executed with the 11 tertiary institutions” by CIBN.
“It is not only another step in our efforts to enhance the competencies of the practitioners in the industry, but a further manifestation of the Institute’s mandate as the sole accreditation agency for the implementation of the competency framework in the banking industry,” the president said.
He listed, benefits of accreditation to include, assurance that the programmes have met international best practices, recognition of the concerned programmes, enhancing their relevance, improved quality/consistency of the programmes and provision of learning pathway as well as increase in the knowledge/skills base of the professionals.
“Indeed, a critical and extensive assessment of the impact of the ETSPs was 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; the 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, 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 not allow this as the banks will be requested to forward to the Institute the faculty used for each programme,” Olugbemi pointed out.
The newly accredited programmes bring to the total numbers of ETSPs and bank academies under the Institute fold to 85 and 21 respectively. With the accreditation, graduates of the academies would secure exemptions thereby facilitating their completion of CIBN examinations.
Agreement with these benefiting institutions, Olugbemi said is not limited to their banking and finance programmes but also extended to accountancy, business administration, economics, marketing and similar programmes in the faculties of education.
