What a great day the ICA Open Day in London was last week. It was really hectic but also really enjoyable.
Hopefully some of you made it, but if you couldn’t (or weren’t sure if it was really for you), then here is an overview of some of what happened and what makes it so good.
As you’ll know if you attend/watch the recording, it’s an ICA event but ICT are also very much involved. There’s a lot of hard work in advance to ensure the Open Day goes well (incidentally, the Open Day is sometimes known internally by its slightly less formal name of ‘the Carnivale de Compliance’).
The attendees are (quite rightly) expecting a slick and useful event. And that is what happened. Both sessions ‘sold out’. In fact, for the morning session, there was standing room only and we had to bring in additional seating.
There is a core team of ICA & ICT staff, but also many other people who support the event – including the fantastic administrator team at Holborn Bars, the audio visual and web team, and the ICA Examiners (who answered a lot of questions around assessments).
Answering questions is really the key theme of the day. I was there on a stand with the ICT team, and we were really busy speaking to potential students. Which was brilliant, as that was exactly why we were there.
There is a good variety of ICA qualifications, set across a number of topics and academic levels.
These are designed to be an overview of the ICA subject areas. What does AML involve? Why is financial crime prevention so interesting? How does compliance add value to your business?
There were also presentations from recruiter Robert Walters around the importance of ICA qualifications, and some fantastic testimonies from ex-students from Ernst & Young about the tangible benefits of their studies with ICA.
The only thing we struggled with was time!
We did our best to talk to everyone but at points there were queues of interested attendees waiting to talk to all the presenters and exhibitors. Which was great of course but I still feel we ought to apologise for keeping people waiting. Hopefully you got all the answers you wanted to make an informed decision around taking your next steps.
If not, please get in touch and we can have a chat. There’s still time to enrol for the autumn intake of qualifications.
If you weren’t able to attend, you can check out the best bits on the ICA Open Day Storyboard and also watch the presentations on the ICA YouTube Channel.