Dipo Olowookere
A partnership has been entered between First Bank of Nigeria Limited and CFA Society Nigeria to ensure that the Ethics Challenge holds this year.
The Ethics Challenge aims to promote the highest standards of ethics, education, and professional excellence in the investment industry.
First Bank came into the picture as a way to demonstrate its commitment to ethics, professional excellence, capacity building and inclusive growth of Nigerians.
The lender noted that its collaboration with CFA Society will also showcase the First Bank’s support for education amongst youths and the drive for nation building and aligning with the Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability strategic approach and the objective of the bank’s endowment programme – the Samuel Asabia Chair for Business Ethics at the University of Lagos.
The Ethics Challenge is one of the university outreach programmes organised by CFA Society Nigeria for university students.
Speaking on the event, which holds between November 2 (Lagos and Abuja) and November 3 (Lagos only) 2018, Group Head of Marketing & Corporate Communications at First Bank of Nigeria, Mrs Folake Ani-Mumuney, said that it is a part of the bank’s ambition to raise the next generation of financial analysts who will operate under the appropriate guiding principles.
“This partnership is an improvement of last year’s edition of the programme. We realise to need to carry out adequate engagement with students as regards business ethics. That way, we will be shaping the future of the investment industry in Nigeria,” Mrs Ani-Mumuney said.
With seven universities competing in the 2017 ethics challenge, CFA Society has set out to increase the impact of the 2018 version by expanding the number of participating universities from seven to twelve, including at least one West African university.
This year, the programme will run regional competitions in Abuja and Lagos before running a National Final in Lagos.
Also, in line with its ‘Women in Investment Management Initiative’ and to encourage women inclusion, the CFA society has added a requirement that each team must be represented by an equal number of female and male students.
Mrs Ani-Mumuney said that it is hoped that these two strategic improvements will position the competition to enable the Bank make bigger impacts through the Ethics Challenge.
Participating universities for the programme are Babcock University, Bowen University, Covenant University, Ekiti State University, Mountain Top University, Obafemi Awolowo University Ile-Ife, University of Benin, University of Calabar, University of Ibadan as well as University of Lagos for the Lagos preliminary round, while the Abuja Based preliminary round will have University of Abuja, University of Maiduguri, University of Ilorin, University of Nigeria and Madonna University participating.
The competition will take place in two rounds with the preliminary rounds taking place in Lagos and Abuja. Thereafter, two qualifiers from the Abuja region and four qualifiers from Lagos region will converge in Lagos for the grand finale.
