Smart Campaign’s closure – On July 28, our friends and colleagues at the Smart Campaign announced that the Campaign is coming to an end. CERISE and SPTF send our most sincere thanks and admiration to everyone who has served on the Smart Campaign staff or Steering Committee in the past ten years. Your dedication to client protection has transformed our industry.
As long-time partners of the Smart Campaign, CERISE and SPTF are committed to preserving and advancing the Client Protection Standards. The Universal Standards and Dimension 4 in particular — entitled Treat Clients Responsibly—contain the Campaign’s Client Protection Standards. Client Protection has always been a central part of our work and that will not change. As time passes, SPTF and CERISE will steward the evolution of this client protection content, ensuring that it continues to be the ‘do no harm’ foundation of social performance management.
Similarly, SPTF and CERISE will maintain the Smart Campaign’s extensive library of resources—guides, templates, case studies, and more—in the SPTF Resource Center. Though we already have many of these resources on our website, our Resource Center will soon offer a better user experience and new features that will make it easier to find the resources you need.
SPTF and CERISE also wish to recognize the community of experts—trainers, assessors, TA providers, and others—who have brought client protection to life in the field. We urge these experts who are not already part of the SPTF TA Database to join the SPTF TA Database which will connect you to our mailing lists, to potential clients, and to other experts. In the coming months, we will have networking and learning opportunities tailored to this community, so please make sure we have your contact information. In the meantime, please email us at cerise@cerise-spm.org with questions and ideas for how we can serve you best.
With regards to client protection certification, neither SPTF nor CERISE is structured as an accreditation body. However, we are analyzing market demand for different types of assessment and rating products—including interviews with FSPs, networks, regulators, and investors to understand what the market needs. We are making ourselves available as a common platform for rating agencies to coordinate on their plans for client protection assessment and rating products. SPTF recent conversations with rating agencies indicate that they are committed to providing client protection products and are excited about the possibilities for more flexible options for the market.
In the coming months, CERISE and SPTF will continue to wholeheartedly pursue our customer empowerment and customer outcomes agendas. We are excited to build on the client protection work that has been faithfully developed over the past decade and to push ahead toward even bolder social goals for our industry.
Stay tuned for more information on the perspectives and next steps for CERISE and SPTF on client protection!
Thank you for being a part of it. And thank you again to the Smart Campaign!
