Indonesia’s ministry of manpower, its central bank, and its national profession standardization agency, the government agency with oversight of standardization and conformity assessment, this week signed a memorandum of understanding to standardize the skills and competencies required by employees in the financial services sector.

In her speech at the signing ceremony, Minister for Manpower Ida Fauziah said that those working in the banking and financial industry need to have the technical and managerial capabilities to apply banking business principles, and these capabilities must be standardized at every level from managers to supervisors and right down to the tellers.

“We have a poor experience in banking operational governance that affects our financial system,” Ida said. “We don’t want any recurring mistakes, that is why we need to have standardized competency.”

She called on Bank Indonesia, the central bank, to accelerate the standardization process by allowing the internship program for standardization to be held in all national banks, and offered her ministry’s support in the form of training centers which will provide training to bankers. 

The standardization will ideally improve the quality of talent in Indonesia’s banking sector and help financial institutions keep up with rapid technological advances and the proliferation of financial services products. It will also help the sector move towards a more digitalized payment system.