With today’s financial services businesses facing ever fiercer regulatory scrutiny, insurance companies of all types and sizes face a pressing need to invest in the knowledge and the skills of their employees to keep themselves compliant across all areas of their operations.
But materials that are poorly maintained or poorly matched with the actual learning needs of your staff – however competitively priced – will never yield a good return on investment
But, with margins under pressure on all sides in today’s highly competitive insurance market, the budgets available for training and competence activities are being squeezed just when that investment is most needed. One response to this is shifting from more expensive face to face training to online learning, or e-learning as it is known.
There’s a general recognition that e-learning can be a cost-effective way of delivering consistent training to a large number of employees in a short space of time. But materials that are poorly maintained or poorly matched with the actual learning needs of your staff – however competitively priced – will never yield a good return on investment.
The good news is that the better compliance e-learning materials on the market today are increasingly sophisticated, modular, interactive and hence effective. Crucially, they are scrupulously maintained and updated to ensure you don’t risk shooting yourself imparting information that is incorrect or out of date.
My own firm, Searchlight, has been active in delivering insurance compliance training, both face to face and via e-learning platforms for many years. We’ve found that each approach can complement the other. We’ve had the opportunity to test and evaluate a wide range of different approaches, and this has given us a good all-round understanding of how to deliver role and skill specific compliance learning.
We have consistently invested in the authoring of, and the platform behind, our compliance e-learning offer. This has enabled us to give clients the breadth and flexibility of learning materials they need to meet the full range of their employees’ compliance training needs.
Also offered is ‘live’ support and back up to e-learners and their managers and provide the option of ‘blended’ training that combines e-learning and face to face to deliver the best possible return on investment.
We have built in a ‘two-speed’ approach that allows newer staff to start from scratch, while those with more experience can begin by undertaking assessment modules designed to test their knowledge and establish whether and where they need to undertake further study.
Rather than just a catalogue of learning materials, we offer a joined-up e-learning platform that allows users and training managers to keep track of progress, manage workflow, and ensure all activities undertaken work towards pre-determined knowledge and skills acquisition objectives.
We’ve learned the importance of offering a range of options, from a single individual taking a single module – to complete multi-user access to an extensive library of resources and support services, including a glossary of over 700 technical insurance terms.
Approached in this way, e-learning doesn’t have to be the poor relation of training delivery. Properly targeted and tailored, interactive e-learning (either on its own or combined with face to face training) really can combine quality and cost-effectiveness.
