Certificate in Supplier Assurance opens for booking

When we asked members last spring which skills they most wanted to build, supplier checks came top for the second year running. More than half said they had approved a supplier in the past year without seeing its accounts. One in five had dealt with a supplier failure that nobody saw coming.

The Certificate in Supplier Assurance (CSA) is our answer. It is the first new certificate since 2021 and the fifth in our range, alongside the FCCP, CCPP, CCM and CCR.

What the certificate covers

The CSA follows the full assurance cycle. It starts with mapping suppliers by spend, risk and dependence, so that effort goes where it matters. It then covers due diligence on finances, ownership and labour standards, onboarding questionnaires, monitoring for early signs of distress, performance reviews and, when needed, a planned exit.

Learners work through the case of a food distributor with 40 suppliers and a recent near miss, when a packaging supplier stopped trading a week before a seasonal peak. "We wanted a case that felt uncomfortable," says Hannah Cartwright, our Standards Lead, who wrote much of the course. "Nobody did anything outrageous. They just stopped looking."

How it is assessed

Candidates prepare a short assurance report on one supplier, either from their own organisation, anonymised, or from a case pack we provide. A 60-minute online exam then tests how they would respond to new information about that supplier. Both parts are marked by the Academy Examinations Board against published criteria.

Dates and prices

The first cohort starts on 2 November 2026, with four live online workshops over eight weeks. The CSA costs £395 for members plus the £35 booking fee. Passing it counts towards Certified membership and allows holders to use the letters CSA.

Places in the first cohort are limited to 24. To book, log in to My Academy or contact Member Services.