CPD for Paraplanners

andrewlzl

Hi all. Hoping for some help. We have a team of paraplanners and need to implement so sort of continuous learning.

What have others found works for you?

We are hoping to aim for 2 hours per month covering various areas. Are there any resources you could recommend for this?

Many thanks

benjaminfabi

Hi

Obviously there's the online assemblies in this website.

Financial Assess is the paid for corporate CPD solution of the CII/PFS. If you want supervision and development plans for each member of staff this is a good tool, also links directly into the PFS CPD system, so no need to log entries.

If you have CISI membership, they have a learning platform that is similar, but is included within the membership fees (might be an additional payment for supervisor functions?)

M&G does a "Techy Thursday" I think last Thursday every month for an hour and covers a wide range of stuff. Also legacy available eg the recent Bond School was decent, and there's a lot of still current LTA abolition content.

All of the above are individual though.

If you want to develop paraplanner skills for research and information presentation, you could designate regulatory/tax update roles to certain members. EG I am subscribed to the various HMRC newsletters for pension scheme admin, taxes, and tax-efficient savings. Each time rules change, I get the email ( on a Saturday morning). When it's relevant, I will write this up as a short briefing note for my planners to outline what we might need to think about for affected clients. I also subscribe to the weekly FCA update email (Friday PM) and this gives a full breakdown of what's been issued that week eg consultations. Tasking one or more paraplanners to present a consultation to the team and open discussion on current and potential future practice within the firm gets people thinking in a slightly different way to normal.

Depending on how many of you there are and what your working practices are, you could invite speakers from the industry to the office.

If you are a remote team with a central office, I'd be asking senior mgmt for a half day once a month to get everyone together. Agree a budget and try and get some paid-for food in at the start or the end. 2.5 hrs working and then 30-45 minutes of social. This will create far more benefit than just that of continuous learning, in terms of relationship building and information sharing.

Steven_McBurnie

@andrewlzl said:
We are hoping to aim for 2 hours per month covering various areas. Are there any resources you could recommend for this?

Hi Andrew - why not 35 hours per year?

My understanding is that with the CII/PFS you need 35 hours - https://www.cii.co.uk/learning/cpd/cpd-scheme-rules?srsltid=AfmBOooQevCWOuR9RNi3RNsJli2AZlcT9Trtkyn9Hq2g_bCj6C2Zxv4f & CISI is the same but with Ethics an additional requirement.

Your external compliance may offer CPD as I know threesixty do. I've used Financial Assess before but would recommened CISI membership due to their CPD library.

Especially as you can now meet the 15 hours IDD requirement:- https://www.cisi.org/cisiweb2/cisi-website/cpd/insurance-distribution-directive

Best,
Steven