World-class learning
Annual Report 2023
STRATEGIC THEME:
Sector thought leadership – progress in 2023
SUMMARY:
We will continue to support our members with relevant qualifications, Continuing Professional Development content and learning communities. Our post‑qualification learning will focus on CPD at all levels, enabling members to build and maintain their expertise and professionalism. We will create a simple and structured development pathway aligned to our Professional Map and each membership level for all insurance and personal finance professionals, helping them to ‘get in, get on and give back’. This approach will be supported by modern tools, learning resources, communities of peers, qualifications and CPD at every step of the member lifecycle, consistent with an exemplary professional body.
We will achieve this by building a flexible and blended learning framework that understands that progression can include assessment success, recognition of prior experience and learning, CPD and active engagement with a thriving learning community across our professions and societies.
COMMENTARY:
Gill White, Chief Customer Officer, commented on the progress made on the World-Class Learning theme:
“We have made excellent progress on the back of the launch of our Professional Map in September 2022, with a new qualification pathway and high-level design shared with stakeholders at various events. We are now embedding the Map within our learning, qualification and membership solutions to ensure it has the greatest relevance to professionals at every stage of their career. We are also piloting the provision of consultancy services to help firms embed the Map within their employee lifecycles, helping them to align job roles, recruitment and skills development around the core competencies the sector needs to succeed. We anticipate that the pathway will go into full development in 2025 on the back of improved IT systems capability.
We have also run pilots for various modes of learning that respond to changing lifestyles and ways of learning and assessment. For example, we are conducting pilots around Membership via Professional Experience and Cohort-Learning. The Membership via Professional Experience pilot looks to bring very experienced practitioners who, for whatever reason haven’t gone down our typical qualification routes, into CII and PFS Chartered or Fellowship membership. These candidates are assessed by occupational behavioural therapists to determine their experience levels. This should not be seen as an easy route however, with one candidate taking over 100 hours to complete 14 case studies to prove their experience and impact at the highest level of competency in the framework.
In addition, we have piloted a CPD by endorsement model, where we look at the CPD offerings of external providers so we can point our members to the best-quality learning. In effect, we are offering a quality-benchmarking service. Further work is required to refine and optimise this route.
Significant progress has also been made on apprenticeships, and T-level qualifications as part of our continued effort to build a talent pipeline for the benefit of our members and the wider sector. In addition, over 500 participants signed up to our virtual work experience, which received excellent feedback from our interns.
We worked with our supplier to improve the experience of those taking our remotely invigilated exams by introducing a ‘host’ to assist students in setting up for their assessment. As a result of this and other improved processes, the number of exam-related complaints we received in 2023 reduced by over a third from 2022. Further enhancements are planned for 2024.
We also launched the Consumer Duty resource toolkit to support firms to implement and meet the requirements of the Consumer Duty legislation. These resources include our new Proficiency+ tool, which helps to diagnose the gaps that organisations may have.
Overall, we have achieved excellent growth across learner numbers, qualification numbers and revenue in 2023. This is testament to the skills, expertise and focus of the team.”
PERFORMANCE:
