Another Week in the Life of......

Hi there,

With the inimitable Mr Downey on his hols this week, there's a window of opportunity (small!) to get to the blog desk and quickly scribble a few notes before he returns on Monday.

As always, a busy and interesting week at the CIOBS. On Monday and Tuesday, eight delegates sampled the delights of the ApEx 1 Revision Course - that's the Regulatory qualification subject UK Financial Services, Regulation & Ethics, for those who don't know! As always, a couple of intensive days, but everyone seemed to enjoy it and take something away from it. Here's hoping that they will do well when they sit their exam.

What else has been happening? Well, work continues on the Revision Notes for the English law version of Retail Banking and of course podcasting continues too. A number of assignments have also come in for the now totally replaced Associateship subjects, So Mr D and I will be getting on to these ASAP.

Elsewhere in the office, the Customer Service Team are preparing to deal with the annual influx of CPD cards and the imminent mailing of associated information to our members. Talking of CPD, did you know that we are launching a new CPD scheme? To this end, we have arranged a secondment from RBS Group and John Grierson will join us next month to take this forward. All being well, the new scheme should be up and running for the 2009 CPD year!

Have you have heard that in addition to the four new subjects being added to the Chartered Banker qualification, that even further exciting changes are planned? If not, I can exclusively reveal that 2008 will see a major change to our premier professional programme, with a new compulsory subject being added. The subject will be Professionalism & Ethics and should be ready by late Summer 2008, so watch out for that!

Anyway, that's enough excitement for one day - it was good while it lasted!

Have a great weekend but beware next week - he's BACK!!

Raymond