The qualification was due to be phased out. It is being extended, and we have used that window to bring it properly up to date. Here is exactly what changed, and why it matters for the staff you put through it.
If you have been watching the move away from the older occupational qualifications, you have probably been asking the same question our clients keep raising. What happens to the programmes we already use? For Core Banking and Financial Services, the answer is that it stays.
The qualification was first earmarked for phase-out as the sector shifts toward the new QCTO framework. There is no equivalent replacement ready yet, so the registration period is being extended. In practical terms, you can keep enrolling employees against it, and you keep the learnership incentives and workforce development benefits that go with it, while the new framework catches up.
We could have left the programme as it was and carried on enrolling people. We chose not to, and the reason is simple. This sits at NQF 4, which makes it the first real step into banking for a great many of your people. A teller, a new branch hire, someone crossing over from another industry. When a whole career gets built on this foundation, it cannot be running on numbers and examples from years ago. So we went through it properly, module by module, and rebuilt what needed rebuilding.
What we changed, and what it means for your people
- Digital Banking and Technology are now part of the foundation. The material now includes proper content on the digital and automated bank your people are joining, rather than the branch-led world the programme was originally written for. Even at entry level, that grounding shapes how quickly someone becomes genuinely useful.
Here is what stays the same. Your people earn the same recognised NQF 4 qualification, the learnership incentives and B-BBEE benefits are intact, and the throughput discipline we are known for carries on, which is why our completion rates sit well above eighty five percent against an industry figure closer to sixty seven.
As a first qualification, this one sets the tone for everything that follows in a banking career. If you are choosing where to place new starters, you are really choosing the footing they begin on. We think current data, current practice and consistent delivery are the right footing, and we would welcome the chance to walk you through it before you plan your 2026 and 2027 intakes.
