IISA and INSETA prevent sector data loss
The Insurance Institute of South Africa (IISA) and the Insurance Sector and Education Training Authority (INSETA) have come to the rescue of thousands of insurance stakeholders around the country by preventing the loss of critical data on sector qualification achievements – over 40 000 student records have been safeguarded.
INSETA provided financial assistance to the IISA to upload years of student records to the National Learner Records Database (NLRD), South Africa’s system to track learner achievements. The student records were in danger of being lost when the College of Insurance – a former division of the IISA – closed down in 2006, soon after the establishment of the NLRD.
David Harpur, Chief Executive of the IISA, said a total of 40 000 student records extending as far back as 1989 needed to be uploaded to the NLRD (as well as the INSETA Learner Management System) to ensure that former students could access information and proof of their qualifications.
The project also allowed the former College’s courses to become unit standard aligned, in line with the National Qualifications Framework.
The IISA called upon INSETA to provide financial assistance for the project.
“When the College of Insurance closed down in 2006, the IISA took it upon itself to collect all the student information together and meet the closed College’s obligations to its former students,” said Harpur.
“This, however, proved to be a massive undertaking as all the information needed to be collected and organised according to the NLRD’s requirements before they could be uploaded to the system. Luckily, INSETA understood the importance of having this information available to the industry and provided us with the financial assistance to complete this resource-intensive project,” he said.
The project, which commenced in November 2007, was finally completed in December last year – with over 200 000 individual programme modules being formatted and uploaded.
Deloitte was assigned to handle the consolidation and uploading of the records – a tough task as student information had been collected differently over the years and ID numbers and personal information in many instances needed to be tracked, added Harpur.
“INSETA employed Deloitte to manage that process,” he said.
INSETA CEO Sandra Dunn said the need to step in was clear given the importance of having up-to-date and accurate student information for the insurance industry as a whole, particularly with the requirements for FAIS licensing.
“The College of South Africa had trained thousands of students over the years, many of whom now work as brokers in the insurance industry. These professionals rely on the institution where they studied to keep their student records in order and to upload details of their qualifications to national databases such as the NLRD,” said Dunn.
“We immediately saw the need to make this happen when the College was no longer able to do so and the IISA did not have the financial capacity to complete the project on its own,” she added.
“It is also very important that we have accurate information about qualifications obtained in order to better understand the skills needs of the industry and in which areas more support is needed – the NLRD was actually established for this very reason,” explained Dunn.
Harpur assured former students that their records were now in tact, up-to-date and unit standard aligned (in terms of the National Qualifications Framework).
“We had tremendous cooperation with INSETA and they instantly understood the need for this undertaking. This is a great example of two independent bodies working together to the benefit of former students and the entire insurance industry,” he said.
