London Institute Of Banking And Finance Is Going Online

To most of the world, London is the epicenter of stately and venerable – places, palaces, institutions with longevity and heft around every corner. It’s thought of that way because, in many respects, it is that way. And while England’s best-known schools, Oxford and Cambridge, are in Oxford and Cambridge, London also has schools that properly carry the description of institution.

One of those institutions is the London Institute of Banking and Finance (LIBF). Founded in 1879, it’s fifteen years older than London’s Tower Bridge. That’s the one that Americans confuse with London Bridge. Tower Bridge is the bridge on the postcards, and it sits some 200 yards from the LIBF campus, in London’s prestigious, classic core.

Over its history, LIBF has prepared 1.5 million graduates for careers in banking and finance, financial and mortgage advising, and business. It’s a privately owned school that tailors many of its programs for required finance-related exams and certifications, credentials that can be quite important when seeking or advancing in the prestigious sector. LIBF may not be the gatekeeper for a finance and banking career in the United Kingdom, but its logo is definitely above the gate.

Admit it – when you hear the words London and banking, you think of traditional, even stodgy, ridgid, slow, perhaps even sacred. Which is why what is happening at LIBF is important, and a potential wake-up call for career-aligned education providers everywhere.

After nearly 150 years of in-person, on-campus training, LIBF is prying open its doors and going online.

Steve Hill is the Vice-Chancellor and CEO at LIBF and explained the major shift in approach in a recent interview. “The idea that you stop studying at 21, 22 is just outdated,” Hill said. “Now, 90% of the people in the workforce will be in the workforce in ten years, they will have portfolio careers and need to constantly learn new skills to keep up or start new careers,” he said. Hill wants LIBF to be the place those workers go, and that means making LIBF certifications more accessible, which means taking them online.

Hill also sees how, by being more accessible, LIBF can help address a national skill and career gap. “Looking at the productivity and skills gap in the UK, the country struggles with numbers of financial advisors, as such a high percentage are retiring, and it’s not seen as the sexiest business for young people to get into. And young people are taking advice from people they see on social media, these people are not qualified, and we can address that,” Hill said.

For example, Hill points out that there are only about 35,000 registered financial advisors in the UK, and he thinks expanding LIBF’s programs can help get more people registered and in those careers rather quickly, since the programs only take a year to 18 months to complete. Some other career tracks, becoming a UK Mortgage Advisor for example, are even faster, taking just six months to complete and sit for national exams.

Then there is also the biggest advantage to being online – reach. Hill says that, right now, LIBF serves about a thousand students on campus in London, but those students come from about 120 different countries. So, he says, the demand for UK-based training and certifications in business and finance is there, worldwide.

Put together, continuing education for adults, the career gaps, and international interest are a major market for LIBF, one that Hill is confident the school can meet because of its core value propositions. “We’re not teaching academic theory,” he says. “We’re focused on the practical work. Even our campus is designed to look like a finance or banking office. And we work closely with the banks to make sure our graduates are work-ready, constantly updating our programs to meet their needs. It’s why 90% of our graduates are in full-time employment within 15 months of completing our programs,” he said.

Though most of the school’s enrollment is for career-track training leading to test and licensure, LIBF also has degree programs, university-level offerings for undergraduate and master’s degrees. But even those, even especially those, Hill says are “commercialized” to fit as closely as possible with employer needs.

“Our degrees are in finance fields but also focus on things such as cybersecurity and data science because we’re listening to our employer partners and these areas are where they are struggling to recruit,” Hill said.

The new programs, including an MBA with an emphasis on project management and another with a focus on human resources, will launch this summer, Hill said.

LIBF built their online programs in-house instead of outsourcing, Hill says. He also points out that, “LIBF will always have a campus,” so the online programs are adding, not replacing.

While it may feel surprising that a cornerstone institution in London is going all-in on going online, it should not be a shock. In hiring Hill, who has a track record in online college programs, the path for LIBF was inevitable and clearly strategic. To his credit, Hill is a deep believer in online learning as essential, and has the usual barbs to throw at the old, traditional schools, even though he is now landing those barbs from the office of a very traditional institution itself.

“Most academic institutions are stuck in the past,” Hill said. “The idea that universities only have fixed start dates, that frustrates me. That people talk about an academic year, so frustrating. And it’s for the convenience of staff,” Hill said. “The biggest issue with online programs,” he continued, “is that life gets in the way. You’ve got to build enough flexibility so that students can step on or step off without having to wait a full year.

“We teach financial literacy,” Hill says, to set up another example. “So, why take an MBA from a school that’s losing money?” He knows he’s making his point.

“We could have carried on,” Hill said, “running a profitable business, but it’s a little niche, and not for everyone. We have a really high EBIDA and it’s very, very profitable. People know who we are, that we’re not just another provider in this space.” But by adding accessible, online programs in areas of high demand, Hill sees big growth. “Many, many times bigger. We’re looking at thousands. These programs will scale to be very quickly over 5,000 students, and we will actually see, as we release more programs, we will be at higher numbers,” Hill says.

Still, Hill says it’s not entirely about business growth, it’s about access. “My mission to take the quality learning to the largest audience,” he said.

The lesson is that a storied, profitable education provider could have stayed their course and been just fine, but they did not. By throwing their hat in the online career training space, LIBF will probably grow considerably, as Hill predicts. Which means that, even more than a decade after online college and training programs became reality, there are still massive rewards to be won in the space.

A bigger question is how – or whether – other schools without the brand, without the record of success, without the career pipelines can compete.