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CFA Society South Africa offers members and other investment industry professionals quality content to meet compulsory Continuing Professional Development (CPD) requirements in South Africa and this has resulted in a significant increase in member satisfaction.
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The Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA) of South Africa implemented compulsory requirements for CPD credits in June 2018, under the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services (FAIS) Act. This is part of a drive to professionalise and standardise the ongoing education and training undertaken by different organisations in the financial and investment industry. Although many organisations had their own requirements – like the Continuing Education (CE) credits required by CFA Institute – there was no framework to measure and record these on a consistent basis across the industry.
At the time, although there were many different organisations that offered training courses, workshops, seminars and conferences, there was no standardised way of assigning credits, or measuring learning and improvement in understanding. In the following months, a side industry has developed in South Africa, offering approved CPD credits, as investment professionals and advisers scrambled to achieve the required 18 verifiable CPD credits before the first deadline of 31 May 2019.
Unfortunately, many of the credits on offer, fell under the banner of “product training”, which is often just a poorly disguised marketing strategy for product houses. There is little independent thought-leadership content on offer, something at which CFA Institute excels. Unfortunately, CPD credits had to be verified by a local approved provider, so at the outset, the comprehensive body of knowledge offered by CFA Institute, was not considered approved content. This created a great opportunity for CFA Society South Africa to step into the gap and offer locally-approved, quality content, not only for our own members, but also for other investment industry professionals.
"CPD credits had to be verified by a local approved provider...This created a great opportunity for CFA Society South Africa to step into the gap and offer locally-approved, quality content."
We now provide solutions for in-person events, whereby attendees are required to register and sign in and out, using picture identification. We also offer online offerings – due to the large geographic footprint of our member base (the South African society covers all of the SADC region, an area of almost 120,000 km2) – whereby after viewing a webinar, you have to answer a number of questions to confirm your understanding of the content. A very exciting milestone for CFA Society South Africa has been the introduction of a local society membership on 1 September 2019. A major part of the value proposition for this membership is the guaranteed minimum 18 hours of CPD credits required by the FAIS Act.
In our most recent member survey, we saw a specific increase (between February 2019 and August 2019) in questions relating to CPD, as follows:
- How do you rate CFA Society South Africa’s provision of CPD services? Scores of four and five (good or excellent) increased from 50% to 62%.
- Do you think your membership offers good value for money? Scores of four and five increased from 40% to 50%.
We believe that these improvements, measured over a mere six months, is largely attributable to the progress we have made in the offering and recording of verifiable, quality CPD content.
Let’s Measure Up!
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