THE INSURANCE Sector Education and Training Authority (INSETA) has awarded the Graduate School of Business (GSB) a major contract to deliver tailor-made leadership and executive development programmes to the insurance sector. The deal is the first of its kind in South Africa and will play a key role in extending management and executive capacity in the sector.

"This is a landmark agreement," said Nelius Volschenk, Chief Executive Officer of INSETA. "These programmes will be groundbreaking and world-class. This is the first time that anything on this scale has been attempted in South Africa where high-level programmes are customised to the needs of an entire economic sector.

As part of the contract, the GSB will develop and administer two programmes, a Leadership Executive Development Programme targeted at senior executives, and a Leadership Advancement Programme for management. The focus of the programmes will be on emerging and current leadership, and they will address the employment equity profile and skills base at management level within the sector. INSETA's funding of the programmes will focus on previously disadvantaged candidates.

The GSB beat off strong competition, including bids from other major business schools, to win the contract to develop the programmes. Mebs Loghdey, Director of Tailored Programmes at the GSB, said that he believed that the combination of the GSB's methodology of adult learning, which embraces action learning and systems thinking, and its philosophy of "growing the whole person" is a winning formula for business.

"We were told that the GSB's methodology was refreshingly different and progressive compared to some of the other proposals on the table," he said.

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