20 years Institute for Financial Services Zug

The Institute for Financial Services Zug IFZ of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts was created from a cantonal initiative to further strengthen Zug as a trading and financial centre. Since 1997, over 25,000 people have received training and further education at the IFZ. From major banks to pension funds to SMEs: they have all benefited from financial experts for 20 years.

Representatives

Representatives from politics and business wanted to create a university institute to further strengthen Zug as a trading and financial centre. Today, the IFZ is by far the largest centre of excellence among universities of applied sciences in Switzerland in the field of financial education. It employs 90 staff and trains over 3,000 people each year in courses, seminars and conferences.

One third of all Bachelor's and Master's students in the Department of Economics at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts attend IFZ-supervised degree and Master's programmes in Finance & Banking, Controlling & Accounting and Real Estate. In the performance mandates of continuing education, services and research, the institute generates external revenues of around nine million Swiss francs annually.

For the Lucerne School of Business, the institute now jointly managed by Christoph Lengwiler and Linard Nadig has made a significant contribution to raising its profile far beyond the region. Christoph Lengwiler sees the institute's twentieth anniversary as the ideal occasion to hand over responsibility and make way for younger forces to take over the next chapter of the success story. He will continue to support the Institute as a lecturer and project manager.

What the future holds

Even after 20 years, the IFZ continues to focus on the future: "We are constantly expanding our range of continuing education courses and taking up current trends and developments in the financial sector with practice-relevant studies and research projects," says Christoph Lengwiler. This includes expanding the topic area of "combating white-collar crime" with seminars, conferences and research projects. "We are also working intensively on digitalisation, as this development will have a significant impact on the financial and real estate sectors and professions such as controllers over the next few years," says Linard Nadig.

From autumn, he will be tackling this and other challenges with the new co-director Prof. Dr. Andreas Dietrich. Andreas Dietrich has been a lecturer and project manager at the university since 2008. He will succeed Christoph Lengwiler on 1 September 2017.

You can download the anniversary publication "20 years of the Institute of Financial Services Zug IFZ" at this Link download for free.