The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment (CISI) welcomes the Lord Mayor of the City of London Charles Bowman’s inaugural speech launching the “Business of Trust” programme.
The speech set out the new Lord Mayor’s objective to improve the trustworthiness of the UK financial and professional services sector and create a lasting legacy of better business trusted by society.
The CISI supports the Lord Mayor’s initiative. The 45,000 strong global professional body has as its motto “My Word Is My Bond”, which has been central to CISI’s efforts to show that professional conduct is a critical complement to business and financial services professional knowledge.
The CISI expects all members to uphold this motto in their daily lives and be standard bearers for CISI and for absolute dedication to professionalism in financial services.
Throughout the 25 years of its development CISI has always held integrity and ethics as fundamental to its ethos, influencing standards of professional competence. Scott Dobbie, CISI’s Chairman from 2000-2009 sums up the essence of this commitment to professional behaviour: “The sound advice given to me on joining a then small Edinburgh stockbroker in the early 1970s was ‘Client first, firm second and self third’ – advice that has stood the test of time.”
Simon Culhane Chartered FCSI, CISI CEO said: “We applaud Charles Bowman’s initiative which will help focus the spotlight on programmes committed to ethics and integrity which have been in place in our profession for some time. This will also help create a sustainable legacy of better business trusted by society.
“We were delighted to be part of the steering group which helped shape this initiative.
“Ethics is a cornerstone of CISI membership. We recently introduced a mandatory ethics element into our Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme for members and we were the first body in financial services to require members to take and pass our annual IntegrityMatters test and 54,000 of these tests have recently been completed by financial services professionals and CISI members.
“We focus on the importance of trust in our Integrity at Work workshop, which we have been delivering to members and stakeholders globally for almost a decade. To date, 68 of these interactive workshops have been presented by CISI in 15 countries this year to over 3,300 attendees. This is a powerful tool in helping to spread the message of the importance of trust and professionalism.
“We welcome the opportunity to share the lessons we have learned from delivering this workshop to financial services professionals (and others) with the Lord Mayor and with businesses. We look forward to supporting this programme.”