ISFB interviews

Daniel Meyer, you are Head of Certification and a member of the Executive Board of the SAQ Swiss Association for Quality. Can you tell us about the association and its role?

The association, founded in 1965, is dedicated to the exchange of knowledge and experience in the field of quality and quality management. We create knowledge and networks in the fields of quality, business excellence, operational excellence and the circular economy for and with our members.

Over the past 10 years, the "Client Advisor Bank" certification has become the most important for both our certification body and the Swiss banking industry, due to the extensive regulations to which the banking sector is subject.

To meet the high expectations of regulators and banks alike, the certification system has been accredited by the Swiss Accreditation Service SAS to ISO 17024. To ensure that certification reflects current practice, SAQ has set up a standards committee and a technical board made up of various representatives, including Swissbanking, UBS and Raiffeisen, as well as cantonal banks and other bank representatives.

On the one hand, the two committees work at a strategic level, developing the certification system. On the other, they deal with the body of knowledge that forms the basis of the examinations.

Thanks to the various collaborations that SAQ has managed over the years, the banking sector has been able to establish a quality standard through customer advisory certificates. SAQ is the owner of this license, which enables participants to obtain a single certificate recognized independently of the organization they work for, as long as it is in the banking sector.

ISFB is an SAQ-accredited institute, serving the whole of French-speaking Switzerland. What are the roles of these accredited institutes, and how do you work with them?

As a certification body, we are responsible for the neutrality, fairness and consistency of examinations carried out at approved institutes. Each candidate must find the same framework conditions and overcome the same hurdles, regardless of the institute in which he or she takes the certification. These mandated examination institutes are therefore constantly monitored and audited by SAQ, so that we can be sure of this. SAQ is also in operational contact with these institutes at least once a month, in order to collect various data. Communication is based on transparency and the quest for constant improvement.

Can you give us some figures on the development of SAQ certifications in the banking sector in recent years?

We launched the SAQ certification process for banks in 2012. In early 2018, we reached the milestone of 10,000 actively certified customer advisors. In the summer of 2023, the number of certificates exceeded 17,000. Growth has slowed a little over the past 2-3 years, but there's still plenty of potential. Of the 6 programs, the CWMA is the most widely issued certificate. Today, we have almost 8,500 active CWMA certificates. The two retail certifications CI and CP follow, with 4,500 and 2,200 certificates respectively. The SME and CCOB corporate certificates are not as significant in terms of quantity (650 certificates for SME and 900 for CCOB), and this can be explained by the fact that there are far fewer advisors in this field.

Daniel Meyer

Head of Certification, Member of the Executive Board at SAQ Swiss Association for Quality

Strategic Business Area 1

Continuing Education

The Institute aims to maximize the collective and individual skills of the banking ecosystem in French-speaking Switzerland. It trains specialists in technical fields as well as in managerial and interactional skills.

The training program offers different types of training in Wealth Management, Asset Management, Retail & Corporate Banking, Support & Back-Office, Legal, Risk & Compliance and Management.

Discover our training offer