GUEST COLUMNIST – GUY DOBSON
Guy Dobson, Director of Dynamique, writes that the limited number of financial products available in the New Zealand market could restrict the range of CPD courses offered to advisers…
Over the last few weeks there has been much published about Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and competence. Fundamentally, content quality and student engagement tools are essential for good CPD outcomes, and under FMA Code of Professional Conduct Code 9, advisers must keep their competence, knowledge, and skill up-to-date.
In essence, CPD is comprised of two key components:
1. Content
2. Tracking/assessment
To this, one can add that advisers treat their clients fairly. The two rules of ‘suitable’ and ‘appropriate’ are not only applicable to the client, but also to the product provider and product, which should perform as expected.
Over the last 20 or so years, CPD has gone through good and bad periods. In earlier times, the banks thought CPD involved putting their handbook on their e-learning system for new recruits who were told “get stuck in”.
Furthermore, technical CPD was provided by bank / investment experts who often did one article and then lost interest in maintaining flow of content. This, as you can imagine, was a huge turn-off for advisers.
The terms ‘structured’ and ‘unstructured’ learning began to be applied seriously from about 2005.
So, where is CPD today?
Top level CPD is comprised of e-briefs (paragraphs of knowledge supported by datasets), e-bites (short sentences stating an outcome/topic relevancy). Images, links to relevant reference papers, YouTube clips provided by investment houses, and opinion pieces from experts. They may also include chat rooms etc. All this helps student engagement.
An assessment quiz is essential, often with a pre-set benchmark pass of say 80%. The LMS would provide course tracking, time spent on an e-brief, and a summary score with the ability to go back and review failed questions.
Within groups there are further tools such as gamification, certificate of achievement generation, and management of CPD plans including progress on content generated/sourced by LMS provider, as well as attendance at seminars, trade shows etc.
Most CPD e-brief sections should take no more than 20 minutes. In cases where topics are more complex such as structured credit, derivatives and ETFs, CPD courses can take up to 75 minutes to complete. Those 75 minutes are usually split into three e-learning sections of 25 minutes each with phased questions throughout. This helps ensure student engagement.
In New Zealand, a small market by global standards, financial CPD is provided by around five providers (one academic). The source and quality of CPD content can be limited. Furthermore, the financial adviser sentiment tends to be ultra-conservative.
The range of products and services offered to Kiwi clients as opposed to Australian, UK, and US clients are less. Whether or not the regulatory environment has made fund managers and advisers hunker down from any form of “out-of-peer” products and services, the jury is not sure.
The herd instinct – safety in numbers – not to stand out from then crowd, can lead to managers and advisers to offer the same type of product, whether or not it is particularly suitable and appropriate for their clients. This obviously has implications for the types of CPD courses offered.
Finally, the selection of a CPD provider can be difficult for financial advisers and others who require CPD points to maintain their licence compliance.
As mentioned earlier, in New Zealand there are five, at the time of writing. One is from academia, one from Australia, three from New Zealand. So what criteria should a financial adviser apply to choose the optimum provider for them?
Here are some pointers:
- Provide courses with content relevant to the New Zealand market
- Must have a e-learning/LMS that provides full CPD tracking, achievement and certification with easy interrogation if required to provide evidence of your achievement/compliance to the regulator
- Based in New Zealand and up-to-speed as regards special nuances of local market
- Quality and sources of content needs to be understood i.e. a CPD provider may use own course design, research, course “look and feel” in-house or may sub-contract out such content to a Third Party Agency
- Quality assurance is paramount. Disclosure on sources and skills need to be made to students
- Range of courses offered must not only cover a broad range of applicable financial products and services, but also business development, health & safety, well-being, technology, cyber-security, privacy and corporate behaviour (such as how to address people and treat them fairly) – a non-exhaustive list, of course…
- Provide CPD that “pushes the boundaries” and makes students think “outside the square”
The role of CPD will expand. Ideally it needs to be immediately applicable. The impact on artificial intelligence (AI) in generating appropriate content is not known at this stage. It is very important that financial advisers are widely read.
This helps determine whether or not what they are reading on Google and other feeds makes sense, is relevant, and helps them provide suitable and appropriate outcomes for their clients.
Guy Dobson is the Director of Dynamique, a company that helps financial service firms deliver better outcomes for their clients. Dynamique no longer offers CPD or financial training.