Compliance training in general insurance is not only a legal and Code requirement, it is also necessary to ensure that you have adequate compliance measures and for an individual’s growth and development as they progress through their insurance career.
Compliance training for front-line staff, compliance teams, responsible managers and boards is one of the core compliance services that I offer to my clients.
Over the years, I have identified what works.
How do you know whether your compliance training has been successful?
The measures of success
Some of the metrics that can be adopted to measure the success of your compliance training are:
- a sustained increase in the number of incidents and complaints being identified and reported internally;
- an increase in the level of complexity of compliance questions being asked by front-line staff;
- a decrease in issues that were previously identified as pain points;
- a desire to attend future compliance training;
- better customer conversations (as assessed by monitoring);
- feedback from post-training surveys aimed at engagement and knowledge retention; and
- an increase in the maturity of compliance discussions within business team meetings.
Importantly, some metrics that should not be used to assess the success of your compliance training are:
- the number of CPD/CIP points attained or annual hours of training completed. ; and
- the cost of training per employee.
However these metrics are useful for other purposes
The key requirements to conducting successful compliance
In my professional experience, the following are some of the strategies that I adopt to ensure successful compliance training outcomes:
- Target the audience – training on financial services laws is not a one size fits all approach. Training for front-line staff differs to training for senior management, responsible managers or the board. Similarily, training must be tailored for different groups such as IDR teams, Authorised representatives, claims staff, sales & underwriters, onshore teams v offshore based teams. Understanding the lens of your audience is critical in how you poistion the same topic but to different audiences. For example RG 271 training for a mature IDR team will be different to complaints training for front-line customer service and claims teams.
- Fun and engaging – when an invite to a compliance training session pops in to your diary it may not necessarily generate your enthusiasm especially when accompanied by the dreaded words ‘attendance is compulsory.’ I consider that I have a training duty to ensure that the time that a person spends with me is of value and justifies them spending time away from their important day-to-day job (which continues even in their absence). Reading through the verbiage of s912A(1) Corporations Act may not be everyone’s cup of tea however, ensuring that s912A(1) is presented and discussed in a fun and engaging manner through, for example, story telling and case studies will faciliate learning as part of an overall enjoyable experience;
- Story telling – story telling brings compliance to life. I have 40 years experience in general insurance and in the last 8 years (as Compliance Advocacy Solutions) have worked with more than 200 firms including insurers, underwriting agencies, TPA’s, insurtechs, service suppliers and insurance brokers. I never breach client confidentiality however I have many stories to share that assists in bringing compliance to life through practical experience. For example, talking about a breach that wasn’t discovered until 4 years after occurrence and the subsequent cost + interest + civil penalty, is a great way to demonstrate the importance of raising incidents early to minimise customer harm.
- Make it relevant – the use of case studies and scenarios are also critical in bring compliance to life but only if they are relevant. Talking about a home damage claim may not be a great idea when training a travel insurer/underwriting agency. Before conducting any training I ensure that I spend time researching my client – what they do and how do they do it. What are the insurance products or services they provide and what distribution channels/service suppliers do they use and what for? What are they licensed to do? What binder/distribution and claim arrangements do they have in place? What are the internal common names used for their policy system, claim system and complaints system? What are the names of each business team, what do they call their customer service people (agents, consultants etc).
- The customer experience– people may not necessarily be experts in compliance however they are experts in their business role. They understand the customer interaction, the customer touchpoints. It therefore makes sense to align your training, and the various compliance obligations with each stage of the customer journey. What are the compliance obligations, during a customer service call – for example, what are the indicators that I’m looking out for to identify a complaint? What is the end-to-end sales process? What is the end-to-end claims process through the customer experience? What is the process for onboarding a prospective client for an insurance broker?
- Incidents and complaints – telling people during training that certain breaches of the law must be reported, implies that your people are aware of the ‘000 of compliance laws applying to general insurance. A better way to train, is to help people understand what they are looking out for. You want your people to be an early warning system, constantly and consistently scanning the business environment for incidents and complaints; so that they can be raised in a timely fashion. It follows, therefore, that the training must cover ‘what is an incident?’ and ‘what is a complaint?’, and what do I do when I have identifed an incident or complaint.
- Test understanding– testing understanding, learning or knowledge retention, doesn’t necessarily mean a quick quiz during or at the end of the training (unless the person is working through an online self-learning module). Adopting techniques such as asking ‘what puzzles you?’ at the commencement of the session or providing scenarios and case studies for group discussion and even the questions asked during the training are all useful to demonstrate understanding. However, never embarrass a person or put them on the spot during your training session. Often you will judge the success of your compliance training session by the level of engagement. Such engagement is also a great test of understanding.
Training requirements
I design general insurance compliance training to meet your firms needs and requirements. The training can be tailored by topic(s), audience or methodology (in-person, video conference or development of in-house self-learning modules).
Contact me, Paul Muir to explore how I can assist you with your compliance training requirements. You can read about the compliance training services I offer here and here.
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