Despite more than a year having passed since the New Zealand Stock Exchange called for tenders to run locally approved education courses, the NZX swears progress is being made on the task.
Last April it asked for locally based "education providers" to bid for the job of running stock exchangetraining courses, which included an overhaul of the qualifications needed by share brokers.
Key goals of this course were to "raise standards and simplify the educational component of the accreditation process for market participants who advise clients in New Zealand".
These courses were supposed to have been ready for new students in January, but this has not happened.
NZX marketing and communications manager Melissa Jenner said progress was being made, but it was too early for any public comment. An NZX employee had been working on the issue full-time for the past three months.
Anyone wanting to study for the NZX Diploma - the minimum qualification to become an accredited NZX adviser, must now go through the Securities Institute of Australia, which acts as a sort of correspondence school.
Jenner said the NZX was ready to go to brokers with recommendations in the next month or so, with new programmes "on track" to be announced this year.
Brokers and advisers needed to be comfortable with the level of qualifications and standards to be set by the NZX, she said. It was important any new programme was "future-proofed".
Paul Gilberd, development manager at the University of Auckland's Business School, said the school was interested in running the sort of programmes described by the NZX, but it would be through its "short course" section which ran courses for "practitioners".
