The IUCAB Executive Committee met on 15th September 2023 virtually and exchanged on current issues. The IUCAB President, Mr. Olivier Mazoyer, welcomed the Vice-Presidents Mr. Charles Cohon from USA, Ms. Eeva Pakkanen from Finland, Mr. Marco Righetti from Italy, Mr. Ralf Scholz from Germany, Mr. Axel Sturmberger from Austria and Mr. Christian Rebernig, the IUCAB Secretary General. For the first time Mr. Mazoyer also welcomed Ms. Tintti Ikonen as Observer from Finland and as guests Mr. Eckhard Doepfer from Germany, Mr. Antonello Marzolla from Italy and Ms. Helena Waker from Sweden to the meeting.

Mr. Rebernig gave an overview of the financial situation of the organisation and the development of IUCAB´s social media pages. The number of follower is increasing, especially LinkedIn is performing very well. A refresh and SEO of the website will start soon.

A key objective of IUCAB is to work with universities to improve the offer of training programs for commercial agents in the future, in particular to create an online training tool. Therefore, a 2-year Erasmus project called “LUCA – Levelling Up Commercial Agents Competencies” was approved in summer 2023 by the European Union. The project team already exchanged in July and the Kick-Off-Meeting is scheduled in November.

As enlarging the IUCAB network and contacts worldwide will be in focus, IUCAB started a global research with 19 countries from 5 continents on commercial agents as well as on manufacturers associations. It is estimated that in addition to the approxemiatly 600,000 agents in the IUCAB member countries, there are about 2 million agents active worldwide. In some regions organisations for commercial agents are existing. In other parts of the world agents work in the market but are not organized in associations. As first step it was agreed to build up a network in South American countries.

The next Executive Committee will be hosted by COACB and is scheduled for 17th November 2023 in Barcelona, Spain.