Sitting pretty on education: Securities Institute

TheSecurities Institutehas seized the opportunity to swoop on yesterday’s deficit announcement by theFinancial Planning Association(FPA) by revealing it attracted 1,639 new members, graduated a record 2,475 students and delivered a financial surplus of $1.9 million in 2003.

The institute says revenue from compliance training and professional development grew by 70 per cent in absolute terms and accounted for 25 per cent of total revenue over the period.

With reserves of $12.4 million, the institute’s national president Ian Neal says the organisation will continue to reinvest in developing and delivering relevant education offerings in order to meet the needs of the changing and increasingly complex financial services sector.

Other areas which contributed to the education provider’s performance was the Master of Applied Finance and Investment course, which attracted 193 new students in the inaugural year for its restructured 12 unit program.

The delivery of tailored in-house training programs to public and private sector organisations also played a large part, with revenues having now doubled from the $3 million received in 2001 to now surpassing $6.5 million in 2003.

Neal says the tense but effective combination of regulatory intervention with industry self-governance prevailed in 2003 and the institute is committed to maintaining that balance.

“Our ongoing challenge is to ensure that transparent and effective practices that put the interests of customers first don’t become bogged down in ineffective and costly legal and bureaucratic compliance.”