With the launch of the Institute of Bankers' MBA programme, chief executive Anthony Walsh continues his commitment to business studies, writes Una McCaffrey

Mr Anthony Walsh, chief executive of the Institute of Bankers, likes nothing more than to escape the daily grind with a good book. His reading repertoire can be divided into two main categories: historical biography and science fiction.

He jokes that a friend once remarked upon his choices, observing that both genres allowed for a degree of moving away from the present world and into something much older, or something much less real.

Meeting Mr Walsh in the flesh, however, it is hard to believe that he has any desire or reason to seek refuge in other-worldliness. This is a man who clearly relishes his job and takes pleasure in the services his educational institute provides. If there were courses in job satisfaction, he sounds like he would be a good candidate for the teaching role.

A loyal native of Waterford, Mr Walsh, an accountant by training, arrived in Dublin in 1980, by way of a Masters degree in Financial Management at London City University. He says that the year in London, in an environment where he was one of just two students from the Republic, marked a point of pivotal change in his life.

He had so shone at London City that the university had offered him a lectureship when his course ended. Although the tempting offer was refused because of obligations Mr Walsh felt he had at home, the idea of an academic future remained with him from that day.

"I felt that I wanted to come back to Ireland but I also felt that having been sponsored by my employer, Waterford Crystal, that I should come back and that I had responsibilities to them. But funny enough, it planted the seeds of an academic life in my mind."

With the possibility of a new career in mind, Mr Walsh maintained his relationship with City University by pursuing a PhD in Control Systems by distance learning.

In 1980, spurred on by the appearance of another "once-in- a-lifetime" academic opening, he eventually made the transition from industry to full-time education, joining what was then an emerging Dublin City University (DCU). With the blink of an eye, his career changed from that of financial professional to that of professor of accounting.

"I knew there probably wouldn't be a second opportunity for me to be involved in the foundation, the starting up of a business school and a university," he says now. "And really, we had great fun."

True to the "seeds" earlier planted, the academic life turned out to be Mr Walsh's true vocation. He embraced it completely and eventually ended up as dean of DCU's business school some years later.

"The thing I'm most proud of about that time is building up a team of really talented people and I think our legacy is that together we did build the business school and contributed towards the building of the university," he says.

After just shy of 20 years at DCU however, Mr Walsh's self-professed addiction to "building" new things was, perhaps without him even realising it, no longer being satisfied. The department he had joined at the very start had ended up as the university's biggest faculty, gaining a strong reputation for practically-based business education along the way. With his work there completed, it was time to look for something new - time to combine the two sections of his working life thus far and look to the provision of professional education.

When the position as chief executive of the Institute of Bankers, the professional body for financial services employees, came up three years ago, it seemed to be the obvious next step. As the pre-eminent professional education body for Ireland's 30,000 or so financial services employees, the institute was at a crucial stage in its development, trying to anticipate educational demands in a sector that was going through constant change.

The position appeared to be tailored exactly to fit Mr Walsh's talents and ambition - he had spent almost two decades in DCU building links with the worlds of business and financial services and now he had the chance to put that knowledge into practice.

As soon as he arrived in the top spot at the institute, Mr Walsh immediately launched a strategic review of its educational operations, a review that has this year culminated in the introduction of a distance-learning MBA.

"I was conscious that we were working with an industry that had gone through a huge amount of change - the sort of drivers of that would have been internationalisation, rapid technology change, consolidation within the industry and increased regulation and public scrutiny. What we were essentially doing was reviewing our services, particularly our educational services, to ensure that our portfolio of educational programmes really met the needs of those working in banking and financial services."

In essence, says Mr Walsh, the institute's work is about harnessing, managing and applying knowledge. He describes today's financial services marketplace as a "classic, 21st century knowledge industry", believing that it is through knowledge as much as hard work that any bank or related company will gain advantage over its competitors. The job of the institute is to provide the education that will allow that to happen.

"Knowledgeable, well-educated staff are key to product innovation," he says. "They're key to developing new delivery channels, leveraging new opportunities with technology and, I suppose, most of all, nowadays financial institutions are dealing with well-informed, educated, more demanding people so they must have well-educated, well-trained staff to deal with that. I think that's where the role of the institute is central."

Currently, the institute counts 19,000 financial services employees among its membership. At any one time, about 5,000 of those are studying for at least one professional education programme.

The programmes on offer reflect the industry they serve and there is, in short, something for everyone: from the bank teller in Letterkenny to the IFSC fund accountant or the Belfast financial planner. All courses contain a mixture of distance learning and short bursts of intensive classroom-based teaching, thus offering the flexibility necessary for anybody who wants to boost their educational potential while holding down a full-time job.

"Everything we do is part-time, post-experience. We're helping people combine work and study," says Mr Walsh. "What we're trying to do all the time is link the classroom and the workplace."

In almost all cases, employers pay for the courses pursued by their staff, with the institute doing its bit to promote study by designing an easy "ladder of opportunity", whereby students can take a sector-specific course at a post-school level and then come back to pursue professional programmes.

"Really, people can go as far in meeting their educational ambitions as they want, irrespective of qualifications on entry," says Mr Walsh.

Until this year, the highest rung on this ladder was a Bachelor of Financial Services degree, accredited by UCD. The MBA has added a new dimension, however, a new direction of which Mr Walsh is visibly proud, describing it as a "significant event".

He says that the MBA comes on the back of a recognition that a significant proportion of new staff entering financial services in the past few years has been of graduate calibre. It became apparent that this needed to be reflected in the institute's educational profile.

The MBA programme, accredited by Manchester Business School, concentrates on financial services and general management and is, according to Mr Walsh, "very well-tailored for someone who wants a career in middle or senior management in banks". Until now, he says, these people were simply seeking their MBA education elsewhere.

"What you have throughthe 1990s and early 21st century is a situation where the MBA's time has come. It's creating the package of knowledge and skills that are truly required," he says, adding that the MBA is increasingly the "passport to senior management".

On the basis of market analysis, the institute expects about 30 of its members to enrol in the MBA every year, although the distance-learning model will allow this to be increased without difficulty. Applications for the first programme close in July.

With the shake-up of the institute's educational offerings now safely under his belt, Mr Walsh does not look like a man who intend to sit still - his addiction to building new things is still at play under the surface.

Viewing banking and financial services as a dynamic and fluid industry, and one to which educators must react with speed at all times, he frequently meets the financial institutions to which his members belong, in an effort to keep up to speed with industry developments. He always takes care to avoid industry politics in favour of identifying educational needs, however.

Mr Walsh says that he rarely feels stressed, possessing a knack for dismissing worries when they arise. Whenever things do get on top of him, he simply walks the worries away and returns to the task at hand with his lungs full of fresh air. In a world of numbers, equations and spreadsheets, it seems that the simple things still make all the difference.