SPECIAL REPORT: 30 YEARS OF THE CISI
Scott Dobbie CBE FCSI(Hon) Chair, CISI: 2000–2009
Professionalism was a key focus during my time as CISI chair, and the year I stepped down, the organisation secured its Royal Charter. Our focus had
always been to create a profession out of investment and financial advice, and that it is vital to get the education of members right and to encourage the application of their knowledge in an ethical way. Besides focusing on our members,
one of my key actions was to ensure the Institute itself took a professional approach to everything it did, and this was why I hired Simon Culhane, Chartered FCSI, as chief executive in 2004. Simon’s impact on the CISI has been truly remarkable, including his
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tireless efforts to expand the Institute globally and the augmentation of our education offering into schools and universities. The major external event in my
time as chair was the global financial crisis of 2007-8. The main impact on the Institute was a big drop in one of
“Our biggest task was perhaps in the aftermath, helping to rebuild the reputation of our members”
our primary sources of income, namely exams. But we managed it well and the impact was mitigated. Our biggest task was perhaps in the aftermath, helping to rebuild the reputation of our members who
sources of energy.” Nuclear and fracking, for instance, beyond the pale for many at the beginning of 2022, are now shifting for some to be the lesser of two evils by reducing the dependence on gas. The CISI has risen to the challenge of
responding to the climate crisis in its changing guises, updating its continuing professional development (CPD) content, including courses, workbooks, and question banks, to ensure that responsible finance is properly reflected throughout, and regular updates via The Review and CISI TV to ensure that developments in the sector are quickly communicated to members. CISI TV’s 80 responsible investment-related programmes were watched more than 50,000 times by the end of 2021. Furthermore, the CISI was among a
dozen professional bodies that, alongside the UK government and Green Finance Institute, launched the world’s first Green Finance Education Charter in June 2020, to ensure that finance professionals globally could develop and build their knowledge in this area. That grouping now counts more than a million members, and the same number of students, in its member bodies. And the Chartered Body Alliance
(formed in March 2017 comprising the CISI, the Chartered Insurance Institute,
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had been entirely removed from the cause of the crisis but were nevertheless unfairly tainted by its fallout. Part of our job was to show the
public that our members were decent people doing a decent job, and that they were there, as one of our charitable objectives states, to “promote, for the public benefit, the advancement and dissemination of knowledge in the field of securities and investments”. Our members have always done this
with integrity, but now this characteristic is tested with a compulsory online assessment before membership can be granted. The trio of skills, professionalism,
and ethics has propelled the CISI to this milestone, and I’m confident it will help it thrive in the next 30 years and beyond.
and the Chartered Banker Institute) launched the Certificate in Climate Risk in June 2021 – the body’s first joint qualification aimed at helping financial professionals pass the ‘Carney Test’, which is based on the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney’s objective of Building a private finance system for net zero. This proactive role in the realm of
responsible finance has led to the UK regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), seeking updates from
// IT’S ALWAYS BEEN THE CASE THAT IF SOMETHING IS FASHIONABLE, THEN PEOPLE SEEK TO ENGAGE WITH IT //
the CISI about its latest initiatives surrounding responsible investing and how it ensures its members keep up to date with this fast-moving sector of the investment world. “There’s a really keen interest by the
FCA on competence washing, whereby practitioners at individual, firm, and industry level claim a level of expertise in sustainable finance that they just don’t have,” says George. “It’s always been the case that if
THE REVIEW SEPTEMBER 2022
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