“wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.”
— Gabriel García Márquez, “Love in the Time of Cholera”
Catching Up
In light of recent events, you may have overlooked that on Tuesday, 21 April 2020 there’s just 70 days (or 2.5 months) remaining on the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Clock.
It may not have the cachet or street-cred of the Doomsday Clock, but the consequences of running out the CPD Clock might be more immediate. You’ve certainly more capacity to turn the CPD clock back.
So we have a simple question for you.
Will you attain 60 hours of CPD?
More importantly, how are you satisfying the requirement that your 60 hours contains 54 hours of qualifying CPD?
To rephrase the challenge, how will you attain qualifying CPD in the age of COVID-19?
Meeting requirements
According to s7.1 of the Corporations (Relevant Providers Continuing Professional Development Standard) Determination 2018 qualifying CPD activity:
- is in one of the CPD areas (Technical; Client care and practice; Regulatory compliance and Consumer protection; Professionalism and ethics; and general);
- has sufficient intellectual or practical content;
- primarily deals with matters related to the provision of financial product advice, financial advice services and financial advice business;
- is led or conducted by 1 or more persons who are appropriate, and have sufficient standing, expertise, academic qualifications and/or practical experience;
- is designed to enhance relevant providers’ knowledge and skills in areas that are relevant to the provision of financial product advice and financial advice services
The Licensee’s duty
Essentially, the assessment of CPD accreditation lies in the hands of the Licensee but FASEA, through their CPD Policy, provide principles to guide the Licensees.
FASEA’s guidance suggests that Licensees should consider the following when accrediting their CPD activities:
- The level of expertise of the CPD provider
- Expertise of the facilitators and/or those delivering the CPD
- The level of learning undertaken
- The stated learning outcomes for the CPD activity
- Volume of time in undertaking the CPD activity
- The approach for verification of learning outcomes achieved
This means, in practice, that 42 hours of the 60 hours required by 30 June 2020, must meet the these requirements.
Will discretionary reading and answering a couple of questions qualify?
Will hours of click and read incite intellectual thought and provide opportunity for practical application?
As a Licensee you need to turn your mind to the learning your representatives are engaging in and consider how, and to what extent, you as the Responsible Licensee can evidence
- the competency of those providing the CPD; and
- that learning outcomes were set at the beginning of the learning; and
- that learning outcomes were achieved.
Good luck.
If you need practical and expert assistance please let us know.
Please check out our webinar catalogue for a list of CPD activities which have been mapped to FASEA Competency areas and include stated learning outcomes.
If you’ve questions about our expertise or our performance, we invite your questions.
