It has probably never been easier to obtain access to CPD material, says Apricity Compliance’s Kim Binks, but with more choice, what’s important is keeping the learning relevant to you.
You will have probably seen that back in May the FCA announced that they were allowing an extension on CPD hours for anyone that has been affected by Covid. They listed a variety of situations in which you would be eligible for an extension on your usual requirements (see full details here).
One of the list was ‘having difficulties accessing CPD materials’. Hopefully, that would never be the case as I think we’ve been spoilt for choice with online content that we could count towards our standard 35 hours with no need for face-to-face events.
So much so, that I think it’s important to go back to what we are trying to achieve by spending those hours on our own personal development. The Apricity view has always been that it shouldn’t be a tick in the box, it should be time spent really developing.
Now more than ever we have access to an abundance of online seminars, webinars and training courses – so how do we keep it relevant? In a nutshell, it should be defined in a solid T&C scheme, including completion of a training needs analysis. The key aim being; where are we trying to get to, and what learning can we do to get there?
There is sometimes a misconception too about what we can actually clock as ‘structured’ CPD; for example, those hours spent slaving away revising for an R0 or AF exam can all count towards your structured requirements.
In addition, e-learning is a great way of getting those hours up and something The Art of Finance has seen a huge uptake in over the summer months. You can even count magazine articles towards your unstructured requirements – industry-relevant ones, of course.
So, hopefully, we’ve got no excuses for not getting those hours logged.
Apricity has just published a blog on the topic of CPD, with a summary of the new DB training requirements. Also, our new CPD tool is now live in the Apricity software. This was developed thanks to industry feedback, to make logging individual and team training much easier. You can read about both of them HERE.
And, in case you’ve not seen it, The Art of Finance has a wide range of e-learning courses available, now including the hotly requested R0 exam support – currently with 50% of ALL online courses.
