Standards
Association badges
A badge is a claim that travels. This page sets out what each one records, what none of them mean, the conditions every holder agrees to, and how a reader who has just arrived from somebody else's footer can check the thing for themselves.
In short
The Association issues three families of badge — membership, partnership and verification — and never combines them. Each badge is served from this domain, carries the holder’s name and its own review date on its face, and links to a public record. Withdraw the record and the badge changes wherever it is displayed. Only 5 badges have been issued.
01 — The problemWhy a badge is harder than it looks
A badge leaves the Association’s control the moment it is embedded. It sits on a page the Association does not write, next to claims it has not seen, and it keeps asserting whatever it asserted on the day it was copied. Three things go wrong, and the programme is built around preventing each one.
- It goes stale
- A record lapses or is withdrawn and the artwork carries on saying otherwise. The answer is that badges are not files. They are served from this domain and regenerated from the registers, so changing a status changes every badge displaying it.
- It gets inflated
- A membership badge is placed where it reads as approval. The answer is one badge per record, the exact wording fixed, and a verification page that leads with what the badge does not mean.
- It gets forged
- Somebody who holds nothing recreates the artwork. The answer is that every badge carries the holder’s name and a code, and a code that was never issued resolves to a page saying exactly that.
02 — The three familiesWhat a badge can record
Clause 11.6 of the constitution keeps membership, partnership and verification apart: none of them confers, implies or accelerates either of the others. The badge programme mirrors that structure exactly, because a scheme that blurred them would undo in artwork what the constitution does in words.
- Founding record
- Records that the Association has confirmed, against its own founding documents, who somebody is and what founding position they hold. It is a question of fact about the Association's own constitution, not an assessment of anybody — which is why it does not run through the recognition review, and why it says nothing about competence, conduct or performance.
- Membership
- Records that the holder participates in the Association. It is a fact about a relationship, not an assessment, and it requires no evidence beyond the membership record itself.
- Partnership
- Records a disclosed commercial or supporting relationship with the Association. It is the one badge that money is involved in, which is exactly why it may never be displayed in a way that reads as approval.
- Verification
- Records that the published checks were completed and what they found. It is the only badge that rests on evidence, the only one that expires, and the only one the Association will withdraw.
03 — What has been issuedEvery badge in existence
The complete list, derived from the registers rather than kept beside them. If a badge is not here, the Association did not issue it.
Founding record
Verified Founding Organisation — ProLendPLA-B-VFO-0001
Recorded 17 September 2026 · Verification page
Membership
Founding Organisational Member — ProLendPLA-B-FOM-0001
Recorded 17 September 2026 · Verification page
Partnership
Verification
None issued.
04 — Conditions of useWhat a holder agrees to
These conditions apply to every badge. Accepting one is accepting them, and the Association does not negotiate them individually — a condition that applied to some holders and not others would tell a reader nothing.
- Display it only while you hold it
- A badge may be displayed only for as long as the underlying record is current. The hosted artwork handles this for you — it changes the moment the record does — but a copy you saved and uploaded somewhere does not, and taking that copy down is your responsibility.
- Link it to its record
- Wherever a badge appears it must link to its verification page on this domain. A badge that cannot be clicked through to the record behind it is decoration, and decoration is what a reader cannot tell apart from a claim somebody invented.
- Do not alter the artwork
- No recolouring, redrawing, cropping, restretching, rewording or removing the code. The artwork carries the subject's name, the date and the review date on its face precisely so that a reader can judge it without trusting the page it sits on.
- Do not imply what it does not say
- A badge may not be placed beside a return, a rate, a projection or a capital-safety claim, and it may not be described as approval, accreditation, a licence, a rating or a recommendation. The Association is none of those things and cannot confer any of them.
- Do not combine the badges
- Membership, partnership and verification are three separate records. They may be displayed together, but never merged into one mark or one sentence that reads as a single, larger status.
- Use it for the holder only
- A badge belongs to the named subject. A group company, a sister brand, a franchisee or an individual consultant does not inherit it, and displaying it on their material is misuse whatever the commercial relationship.
05 — WithdrawalHow a badge ends
A badge is withdrawn when any of the following happens.
- The record lapses at its review date and is not renewed.
- The holder stops meeting a criterion the record rests on.
- The badge is displayed in breach of any condition above.
- A complaint is upheld that goes to the substance of the record.
- The holder asks for it to be withdrawn.
On withdrawal the hosted artwork does not disappear. A missing image reads as a website fault and invites the holder to re-upload a saved copy; a badge that states, in the Association’s own type, that the listing was withdrawn does the opposite. The verification page is kept and updated rather than deleted, so a link in an old article still resolves to the truth.
06 — LinkedIn and other profilesWhere the artwork cannot revoke itself
A hosted badge revokes itself. An image uploaded to LinkedIn, a PDF or a printed brochure cannot — and pretending otherwise is the weak point of every badge scheme. Two things follow.
First, use LinkedIn’s Licenses & Certifications field rather than posting a picture. It carries an issuing organisation, an issue date, an expiry date, a credential ID and a credential URL — which is precisely the information a badge is trying to convey, held in fields LinkedIn will expire on their own. Enter the Association as the issuing organisation, the badge code as the credential ID and the verification page as the credential URL.
Second, wherever a static copy is used, the condition stands: the holder takes it down when the record ends. The artwork prints its own review date for exactly this reason — a reader who sees a date in the past knows what they are looking at without needing anyone to tell them.
07 — Checking a badgeIf you have arrived from somebody else’s website
Every badge carries a code in the form PLA-B-XX-0000. Open privatelendingassociation.co.za/verify/ followed by that code, and the record comes up: who holds it, what it covers, what it excludes, when it was recorded and when it is reviewed. A code that was never issued says so plainly.
If a badge is being used in a way the record does not support, that is a complaint the Association will act on. Raise it through the complaints process, or write to complaints@privatelendingassociation.co.za with the code and the page you saw it on.
08 — Getting oneHow a badge is obtained
Not by asking for the badge. A badge is a by-product of a record, so the route to one is the route to the record: membership through the membership process, partnership through the partnership tiers, and verification through the published methodology. When the record exists, the badge is generated from it. There is no separate application and no fee for the artwork.
Partnership does not constitute regulatory approval or automatic verification under the Association's verification framework.