The pandemic has added an extra hurdle to CPD learning
Key points
- A lot of financial advisors find it easy to get their CPD points but reporting and collating them is perceived as a burden
- Our research found that CPD collection has been a struggle for advisors during Covid-19. Some of the CPD points have been carried into 2021
- CPD Hub makes it much easier for financial advisors to earn, collect and record their CPD points
Continuing professional development is vitally important for individuals as well as the asset management industry as a whole. But collecting and recording CPD points is often seen as cumbersome and this feeling has been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
In a world that’s constantly evolving and where technological advances happen at a rapid pace, it is important for financial advisors to keep abreast of the latest developments in their industry. However, a lot of advisors are time poor and CPD isn’t very high on their priority list. Many of them say that they find it easy to get their CPD points but reporting and collating them is seen as a pain.
This is due to the way CPD points are currently collected and recorded in terms of its ease of use and technological advancement. Existing solutions are either driven by content producers who only offer their own content on their platform and do not allow content from other content producers, or by professional bodies who will typically offer their content on very simple platforms which are often not very easy to access and use.
The pandemic has had an impact on CPD as well, forcing an industry that has traditionally struggled to shift to online CPD learning to adapt fast.
What we have seen from our own research is that CPD collection has been a struggle for advisors during Covid-19. They either switched to online events, roadshows and seminars or carry some of the CPD points into 2021. Our research shows that 30% of UK financial advisors plan to carry forward some of their CPD point requirement into this year, while in countries like Italy advisors have massively adopted online courses.
In the UK, the Financial Conduct Authority has extended 2020 CPD deadlines due to the exceptional circumstances we currently live in, but at some point, these CPD points will have to be accounted for.
Part of the problem around CPD learning is that there isn’t a single solution to CPD point collection, and much of the available content is very scattered. For financial advisors it is a real challenge to demonstrate what they have learned over the course of a year.
A new CPD platform
That’s why CPD Hub was launched, a platform that makes it much easier for financial advisors to earn, collect and record their CPD points. CPD Hub aims to create a healthy and creative learning ecosystem that makes structured and unstructured content easily accessible and automatically records and files the hours spent on learning.
For many advisors, learning is fun and happens in an intuitive way as they search the internet for knowledge by visiting websites of asset managers, industry bodies and so on. The real challenge for most is capturing this learning effort in their CPD reporting.
CPD Hub has a wealth of content across the financial spectrum, all of it categorised and tagged so learners can easily find what is relevant to them. The platform automatically records your completed learning and produces certificates, as well as the ability to upload any offline learning.
One of the biggest advantages of CPD Hub is that every learning moment counts. Unlike traditional CPD learning which requires a minimum time commitment of one hour, CPD Hub incorporates formats of 15 minutes to make it easy for the learner to find the time to earn CPD points.