CPD for financial advisers

Our award-winning ican team have developed a range of technical training material that’s CPD qualifying. You can sign up for live webinars, or access briefing notes and past webinars on demand – when it best suits you.

What is CPD?

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) forms part of the professional standards set by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) for advisers.

The FCA’s professional standards require that financial advisers complete a minimum of 35 hours of CPD each year, of which 21 hours should be structured. If you carry out other retail activities, such as mortgage advice or managing funds, you’ll also need to carry out CPD for that activity.

Structured CPD consists of formal training or learning activities that have a targeted learning outcome. Examples include items like CPD-qualifying webinars, briefing notes, lectures, conferences, workshops, and courses.

Unstructured CPD, by contrast, consists of informal learning activities that make a useful contribution to your learning and development needs – even if they weren’t designed for CPD purposes. An example here could be reading a technical article that enhances your knowledge in a relevant area.

You’ll need to report on your continuing professional development for both, and provide a verifiable audit trail of your activities and learnings. Your CPD documentation should cover three areas:

1. Gaps in your knowledge and the learning needs you’ve identified
2. A plan for how you intend to meet your learning needs
3. Records of your learning activities, including learning outcomes

CPD at Canada Life

Our experts have developed a range of online tools and resources to support you in your CPD training. With us, you can gain specialist knowledge in key areas, including retirement planning, home finance, tax and estate planning, and investment solutions.

We’ll send you a personalised certificate for any structured CPD training you complete and our unstructured CPD content allows you to build and log your own CPD record.

Learning outcomes covered during any webinar or event are available on request.

How can I access CPD training?

With our CPD training, you have the flexibility to decide when you complete it.

• You can join our live webinars hosted by our product specialists; or
• You can access webinars on-demand, when it’s most convenient for you.

In addition to webinars, you can use our ican technical support library to find videos, briefing notes, and reports on a range of issues to help support your training and learning needs.

Why is CPD valuable?

By building on your knowledge of specialist areas and further developing your skillset, you’ll be better positioned to deliver high-quality service that answers to your clients’ needs. Additionally, given the focus of the new Consumer Duty, keeping pace with an ever-changing technical landscape is more important than ever.

Discover our support for the Consumer Duty.

Further resources