SPECIAL REPORT: 30 YEARS OF THE CISI
“There are advantages to doing narrative
exams online, as there aren’t issues with the readability of the handwriting, and rather than sending papers and scripts between centres and examiners, they are delivered digitally,” Susan says. “Due to the robust checks that we
could put in place, remote invigilation has opened access for candidates worldwide. At the time, some people were asking what was taking us so long to launch our service, but we’ve seen other organisations that got going more quickly having lots of problems whereas we’ve not had that.”
Investing for the future While the effects of the pandemic will hopefully subside, there are other present and ongoing issues that require constant focus, notably climate change. The damage that rising temperatures
could do to the planet fundamentally impacts every organisation. The financial sector has a pivotal role to play in tackling climate change, as it can galvanise capital towards new technologies and help polluting companies tackle their carbon emissions. George Littlejohn MCSI, senior adviser
to the CISI, says the Institute’s first investigations into the notion that more sustainable firms might perform better was in its very early years, participating in a project called ‘Rewards of Virtue’ which analysed, amongst others, the performance of CalPERS, the giant Californian pension fund, which was apparently successfully investing in this way. Hard data, though, was scant, he says. But the embrace of ‘responsible finance’
– an umbrella term that encompasses ESG (environmental, social, and governance), sustainable, impact, and ethical investing, and ‘green’ finance – has become particularly prevalent in the past five years as wealth managers and their clients have become more attuned to the issue. The clamour to serve the insatiable
appetite for ostensibly ‘good’ investments puts the CISI in a profoundly important position, because of its stated purpose: “To champion lifelong learning and integrity, raising individual standards of knowledge, skills and behaviour globally to enhance public trust and confidence in financial services.”
Sir Alan Yarrow, Chartered FCSI(Hon) Chair, CISI: 2009–2018
With a background in wholesale financial markets prior to taking on the role of chair of the CISI in 2009, I was perhaps an unlikely candidate to help oversee a retail-focused organisation. But if there were any concerns about this, they
quickly dissipated. On my part, this was because it quickly became apparent that the CISI was, and still
is, a phenomenal organisation, driven by dedicated volunteers and populated by members who are genuinely passionate about their craft. And on the part of any members that might have raised an
eyebrow due to my aforementioned wholesale credentials, hopefully any scepticism was doused thanks to my experience and contacts book that helped the CISI open doors it might have otherwise had to push harder on. In the wake of the global financial crisis, when my tenure began,
“Regulation works best when it is supported by those who are being regulated”
this proved useful, especially as it was vital to alert the very highest policymakers in the country, including the then Bank of England governor Mark Carney, that the UK was regulating the area of financial services that wasn’t systemic, but wasn’t regulating the systemic ones. Regulation works best when it is
supported by those who are being regulated. Practitioner participation is vital in the formation of that regulation. The market will always be ahead of the regulator, so the practitioner needs to own the regulation in both word and spirit so they willingly stop circumvention. After the crisis, the prevailing view was that self-regulation was
bad, and the pendulum swung in the completely opposite direction. The CISI has always been self-regulated, and its success over the
past 30 years shows this is no bad thing. My time as Lord Mayor between 2014 and 2015 helped raise
the international profile of the CISI, but the hard work of outgoing chief executive Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI, and many of his colleagues has helped the organisation become truly global. Ethics and integrity in financial services are non-negotiable,
because where strict rules dominate, efforts to circumvent them flourish. Just because something is legal, it doesn’t make it right, and this core belief will ensure the CISI prospers for years to come.
Read about Sir Alan’s nine years in the role at
cisi.org/sir-alan “This field is so complicated,” George
says. “It is like peeling an onion, as the deeper you delve, the less you realise you know than you first thought.” And it is ever-shifting. “The energy crisis, compounded by the war in Ukraine,” he warns, “has changed the shape of much thinking in relation to good and bad
Andrew Hilton, director of the Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, interviewed our three past chairs to see how much has changed since the creation of the Institute in 1992. View at
cisi.org/30
CISI.ORG/REVIEW
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