The Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC) is launching a month-long consultation process on its revised draft industry performance standards for Retail Financial Services.

The standards, which cover banking, building society operations, general insurance, insurance broking and investment administration, had not been reviewed for several years. The FSSC said need for a major overhaul of the standards became clear as it worked with firms and industry experts to update them, and they have now been re-designed for greater clarity, simplicity and flexibility.

The new industry performance standards define the competences that apply to job roles or occupations.

The main change proposed by the FSSC is to integrate the standards into a single framework. This will feature a set of “core competence” standards that apply to the skills and knowledge required of everyone in the sector.

Other standards will be grouped into “clusters” that represent a common function: some of these, such as the sales cluster, may apply across the whole sector, whilst others, such as the underwriting cluster, will be more specialised.

As part of the consultation, the FSSC will also seek industry support for a single, integrated qualifications framework that will allow qualifications to be customised by organisations whilst retaining their identity as nationally recognised awards.

To contribute to the consultation download the consultation paper from the FSSC website www.fssc.org.uk, available from 9 February.

The revised standards are expected to be made public by June 2005.