Report Back
We are now in the final quarter of the year (cannot believe how this year has flown!) and are confident that we have achieved much of what we set out to do this year. Having said this, there is a lot more to do to enhance our membership benefits and add value and so the journey continues!
Our financial situation continues to improve with Membership income, CPD, Critical Skills and NCA Income all well over budget.
- Standard Bank have embarked on a journey to upskill various roles and they have sponsored memberships for these roles with IOBSA. Their commitment to their people’s development is admirable and we trust that the other banks will soon follow suit.
- Our CPD and Advocacy programmes launched successfully early this year. We now have 186 CPD courses via 19 Service Providers available to members to further their Professional Development. The next step in this process is to add links to each course to enable direct access via our website. You will no doubt have noticed the uptick in social media content and from the analytics, the IOBSA is definitely attracting more attention.
- Our first webinar of the year took place in May and the second in September 2022. Both were very well received. We are working with Standard Bank for the November webinar. Videos of the first two webinars are available on our website for members who may have missed them.
- Our digitisation journey continues and a new membership base system is currently in development. This will enable online payments and generally just streamline our operation and member interface.
- From an Operational perspective, Juan Greyling who many of you are very familiar with, was appointed as Operations and Compliance Manager effective 01 August 2022. We also engaged a new Senior Administrator on 01 August 2022, Dani Lambert, who will manage Membership and CPD and many of you will also know Nomzolo Ndlamla who joined us as Administrator on 01 June 2022 and who takes care of NCA examinations and Critical Skills Letters. The team are now settled into their roles. Further expansion in 2023 is under discussion.
- We continue to represent on various committees such as SAQA, Bankseta, FSCA and many others, this ensures that our members and the industry’s interests are always carefully considered. DHET recently invited us to sit on their Career Development Forum and Bankseta invited us to sit on their Committee that looks at Competency and Skills development for the sector.
- From a Collaboration perspective, we now have links with various Institutes and higher learning institutions and our website is constantly being updated in this regard. We continue to establish links with other Institutes globally and recently met with FINSIA (Australia). The intent is to share interesting content onto our website for members to consume. This also keeps us up to date with challenges and opportunities globally and especially in Africa.
- Our Mentorship Scheme launched in September 2022. Prospective Mentors and Mentees can set up a profile on our website which is only accessible to other members. Please do take advantage of this, we have many very experienced bankers in our membership base who are always keen to give back to the industry.
- We are planning a face-to-face Stakeholder event for October 2022 and will be inviting senior executives in the banking industry, Bankseta, FSCA, SAQA etc. These events will become more frequent as we progress and the next step is to arrange Membership events as was done pre Covid.
- Our annual upload to the SAQA NLRD base was successfully completed in August. We expect a SAQA audit late 2022.
How you can help the IOBSA:
Membership Growth
Historically, the second half of the year demonstrates a drop in individual membership signups. New members only pay 50% of the membership fee if they join from July onwards. Should you be able to refer colleagues to us for 2023, please chat to Juan or Dani about discounts available against your own membership fees.
Content
We are always looking to feature interesting articles on our website so if you wish to refer us to your media department or in fact if you wish to write an article for publishing, feel free to contact me directly.
Going forward
For the final quarter of 2022, our focus will be on our digital journey, continuing our webinar series, collaborating globally and continuing to approach banks and higher learning institutes for bulk membership opportunities for 2023.
Please feel free to send us any suggestions as to what you would like to see in 2023 as well as ideas you may have to appeal to the younger generation of bankers.
Once again, thank you for your ongoing support, it is truly appreciated.
Regards
Sharron Veldsman CEBP (SA)
Chief Executive Officer
