Work is progressing on developing the programme so that financial services organisations will be able to utilise the apprenticeship levy* to fund their employees’ development in 2020.
All apprenticeship schemes must be part of approved apprenticeship standards developed by employer groups (trailblazers) and based around specific occupational and role profiles. As things stand there is no existing standard for treasury.
Our research has shown that creating a standard can be a lengthy and complex process for the trailblazer group, although if there is sufficient demand then we would support and, to the extent possible, help facilitate the development of an apprenticeship standard for treasury.
We have had some exploratory conversations with a number of corporate treasury teams and their Learning and Development (L&D) colleagues, some of whom are interested in taking this forward, while others are less sure at this time. One of the reasons for any reluctance is that only employees based in England are eligible and many larger organisations are committed to their UK-wide and/or global L&D strategy.
The situation in the banking sector is different. In fact, several apprenticeship standards already exist in this space and following advice from the Institute for Apprenticeships & Technical Education, we were successful earlier this year in getting all our qualifications up to level 6 (i.e. up to and including the Diploma in Treasury Management and the Certificate in International Cash Management) added to the FSP standard. Whilst this will allow employees in financial services to access ACT qualifications through the apprenticeship framework it is not a route that non-financial corporates can use. Of course, all our qualifications continue to be available directly from the ACT in the normal way.
We are therefore keen to hear from non-financial corporates who are interested in working with the ACT to further explore routes to access ACT qualifications utilising the apprenticeship levy.
Please contact either myself (jlegge@treasurers.org) or Ria Robinson (rrobinson@treasurers.org) if you have a view/would like to be involved.
*The apprenticeship levy is applied to large employers with a pay bill of over £3 million. The company is currently charged a levy of 0.5% of their total annual pay bill. All employers can use the levy to fund apprenticeship training.
