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CPD – Don’t Leave it Until the Last Moment!
Though you might struggle to believe it, there are only a couple of weeks to go until we enter a new year and, indeed, a new decade. With 2020 fast approaching, it’s time for a reminder to complete any outstanding CPD hours sooner rather than later.
Many firms will use the calendar year (i.e. beginning of January to the end of December) as a marker for completing their CPD hours[1], meaning that this time of year is likely to cause a last-minute rush for those that have not prioritised their professional development before now.
Under the IDD, individuals involved in the insurance distribution chain must complete a minimum of 15 hours’ CPD each year. They must demonstrate minimum necessary knowledge across eight core competencies, which are:
- Terms and conditions of policies offered
- Applicable law
- Complaints handling
- Claims handling
- Assessing customer needs
- The insurance market
- Business ethics standards
- Financial competency
Insurance intermediaries must cover all of these areas, in relation to their individual role.
CPD should be a meaningful learning experience, though the pressures of fitting it in around a busy day-to-day workload can, understandably, seem like a struggle. However, 15 hours, divided up over the course of a year, should be a manageable amount of time to dedicate to learning and development. A couple of hours here and there will quickly add up to the baseline 15 hours requirement – you may find you even exceed this target.
At this time of the year in particular, it may also be worth thinking towards the future and the skills you want to develop in 2020. CPD should be seen as an opportunity to consider your goals – what do you want to achieve through your learning and development requirements?
Set yourself achievable, meaningful goals, relevant to your personal and professional aspirations, in order to ensure that the CPD hours you undertake are a productive use of your time.
However firms and individuals wish to tackle their CPD requirements, it is important that they do so.
The newly implemented Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR), also brings certain training requirements. SM&CR introduces two tiers of Conduct Rules: Individual Conduct Rules and Senior Manager Conduct Rules.
Firms are required to train the relevant staff on how the Conduct Rules apply to their role, with a Senior Manager allocated the Prescribed Responsibility for this. Senior Managers and Certification Staff will need to have been trained, and abide by the Conduct Rules from the start of the new regime (which was 9 December 2019). Firms will then have 12 months to put in place processes to comply with the training and reporting requirements, and train their other staff on the Conduct Rules.
This too should not be left until the last moment. Get ahead of your training and development requirements now and start 2020 on a positive and productive note.
[1] However, the FCA does not prescribe that CPD be carried out on a ‘start of January to end of December basis’ – only that the required hours are carried out in a twelve-month period.