Romanian approach to vocational training in insurance

At the EIET Conference - European Conference of National Institutes for Professional Education in Insurance on ”Acquiring competence to protect and serve the customers” organized by the Institute of Financial Studies, under the aegis of EFICERT on 8th and 9th of October 2015, the first presentation was that of Mr. Calin M. Rangu - Chairman of the Board of the Institute of Financial Studies.

Institute of Financial Studies approach to support Romanian Vocational training in financial nonbanking sector, Călin M. Rangu

The Institute of Financial Studies (ISF) was founded in 2015, as a result of the merger between two institutes specialized in delivering professional training in insurance (Institute of Insurance and Institute of Management in Insurance). The mission of the ISF starts with the study of financial phenomena and mechanism in order to identify future needs, training, specialization and continuous professional assessment of the employees of the non-banking financial system, as requested by the Financial Supervisory Authority in its decisions and by the European standards, with the specific purpose to deliver specialized training programs in the field of insurance, private pensions and capital market, having a solid ground from the previous experience: workshops, conferences, training programs, master programs.

Among the main elements of future strategy of the Institute are developing occupational standards and assessment systems based on skills, through the transition from knowledge accumulation to competences development, ensuring the training for the persons that are working in the non-banking financial sector as new European and national regulations are implemented, supporting companies that are active on the market of vocational training for ensuring fair competition and a high level of training of the specialists, providing an unitary evaluation/examination system at the level of the market, conducting studies and research in the non-banking financial services domain, editing of specialized publications.

Romanian regulations stipulates that an intermediary must possess, in order to activate as a distributor of insurance/reinsurance products, a vocational training certificate. Occupational standards must be developed and the certification must follow the European requirements regarding the competences and not be just a certification of knowledge. The same regulations establishes that every 3 years the intermediary has to obtain a CPD certificate. In the case of executives of insurance intermediaries, the deadline is every 2 years. In this domain, the new European principles, especially the future IDD directive, must be applied, by creating a system based on credits and, in the case of executives, courses and exams should be replaced with competences assessment within evaluation centers as requested by European standards.

The impact of the Insurance Distribution Directive over the professional development of the intermediaries regards the adequate knowledge and competences that they have to have, the minimum training hours per year they have to fulfill corresponding to the role they have on the market, but also to the possibility that, when implementing the directive, the states could require a certification in order to testify the fulfillment of these requirements.

The Institute is acting for the development of the range of training programs – starting from the insurance market, another two financial markets, the private pension one and the capital market will be covered by new programs.

Vocational training means more than attending formal training sessions and passing an examination - selecting appropriate training methods for developing practical; planning and implementing training sessions; assessing and providing feedback to trainees including the use of hybrid training systems, are better approaches to the educational process than the traditional teaching programs.

The imposing of validation on the insurance market (as required by European legislation because of its concern for the consumer) will increase not only the importance of CVT but, hopefully, also the overall quality of the processes and therefore will result in a higher satisfaction of the consumer on this market. The purpose of training of the specialists is to ensure a suitable and correct service for the final consumer, the beneficial of the service or product.

The full content of the presentation may be accesed here.