IFS-Malta participates in EU-funded projects

A delegation from the Institute of Financial Services - Malta (IFS-Malta) comprising Wendy Zammit, Peter Sant and Peter Calleya, recently returned from Warsaw, Poland, where they attended meetings in connection with two EU-funded projects relating to the recognition and portability of financial services qualifications across Europe.

The Banking Insurance Finance (BIF) project is focusing on promoting learning outcomes through the European Credit Transfer System for Vocational Education and Training.

The objective is to allow greater portability of qualifications in the BIF sector, which in turn will facilitate mobility of labour which employs more than six million in Europe.

The other project - First - was born out of a strong belief that the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) has the potential to bring long-lasting benefits to the European financial services sector.

The project seeks to identify specific EQF descriptors that can be applied to financial services, which will facilitate the adoption and understanding of the EQF framework and hopefully motivate qualification providers to apply it to their new qualifications.

Although the First project is specifically addressing the financial sector, its sectorialisation approach also makes it relevant to other areas. Hence, IFS-Malta is co-operating and working closely with the Malta Qualification Council on this project.

These meetings were hosted by the Warsaw Institute of Banking and similar meetings have already been held in Brussels and Edinburgh. The project partners are also scheduled to meet for each project in Malta next year.

IFS-Malta's participation in these projects was facilitated through its membership of the European Banking and Financial Services Training Association.