€qualifise will target 5 types of sectoral organisations:

1) Qualification and certification bodies in the FS sector. These are the primary target and the project will accelerate the benchmarking of their qualifications against EQF, in the partner countries and beyond.

2) Higher training institutions in Europe’s FS sector: trade schools, colleges and universities providing vocational education, private training companies, corporate in-house trainers, professional institutions and other trainers for sector employers. These provide training/retraining to those entering the sector’s workforce, or seeking to enhance or maintain careers. They have an interest in maximising their attractiveness to potential students from across Europe, and maximising the employability of their students in the emerging single European labour market. Attractiveness and employability will be enhanced by offering qualifications benchmarked against EQF.

3) Employer organisations: representing financial employers from vast multinationals to diverse SMEs, micro-organisations and the self-employed. These have an interest in benchmarked qualifications when recruiting staff and when demonstrating competence, particularly in new markets.

4) Membership organisations like professional institutions and trades unions: these will provide a channel to individual practitioners (including self-employed practitioners, employees of large and small organisations & students)

5) Regulators are being created Europe wide to protect the public from bad practices: statutory bodies & registers, ombudsmen, NGOs and self-regulatory bodies Regulators increasingly require evidence of competence as a licence to continue practice in certain public-facing roles in the sector. The benchmarking of these qualifications against the EQF will help harmonise national requirements and lead towards a single European financial market.

The direct users of project results include more than 40 educational program providers currently accredited by €FPA, and the 36 Members of EBTN (European Banking and Financial Services Training Association), Universities offering undergraduate and graduate programs in FS and those interested in the competence of qualified FS professionals.