Paradigm celebrate first anniversary of CPD & Sales Academy

24 September 2019

Paradigm Mortgage Services, the mortgage services proposition, has today (24th September 2019) announced the one-year anniversary of its CPD & Sales Academy, with advisers having logged over 114,000 minutes of activity during the last 12 months.

Launched last year to help advisers reach and maintain their CPD hours under the Insurance Distribution Directive (IDD) rules, the CPD & Sales Academy is a central hub where advisers can access a range of content.

Over the past year, the Academy has been developed and grown to a point where it includes content from over 29 different lenders and providers, plus organisations such as the FCA and FIBA.

There are now 753 registered users of the system who have between them logged 114,817 minutes (or 1,913 hours) of activity. The Academy is available to individuals operating at all levels of a firm including advisers, paraplanners and directors.

The Academy allows individual users to access and record all CPD they have undertaken during any given year – the IDD introduced a minimum requirement of 15 hours CPD for all staff who sell, advise on or transact insurance customers, as well as those that assist in the administration or performance of the contracts.

In the last year the Academy has introduced a Master User Function, which allows Principals or Compliance Directors at a firm to monitor all the activity recorded by their team via the Academy.

The Academy also includes Paradigm’s recently-published eBooks on the requirements under SMCR and tackling mortgage fraud.

The content in the Academy is split by subject, format and learning objectives, whether it is structured/unstructured, and how many minutes/hours it counts towards the CPD requirement. Users can review the CPD opportunities available to them and pick the most suitable and relevant to their needs. Advisers can also log in, record and track all of their CPD hours, plus receive a live update on how many hours they have completed in the year-to-date.

The Paradigm CPD & Sales Academy can be viewed by clicking Academy at the top of both the Paradigm Mortgage Services and Paradigm Protect websites.

Riona Mulherin, Head of Marketing & Operations at Paradigm Mortgage Services, commented:

“Our CPD & Sales Academy has proven to be extremely popular and successful over the course of the last 12 months, to such an extent that in June this year we won the AIG CPD Academy Champion Award at AIG Life’s Annual Quality Awards. What we have tried to do is take the often arduous task of completing, recording and tracking CPD hours and make it as simple as possible for individuals, and now at a firm level those in charge of CPD are also able to oversee all that activity in order to ensure the firm is meeting its regulatory requirements.

“We continue to expand the range of resources, support and material we have within the Academy, and are growing the range of lenders, providers and organisations who are can provide this information in order to raise industry standards and to help advisers feel comfortable in their own development.

“Within the Academy there is exclusive content, and we have a mix of different types, whether that be webinars, event registration, video, podcasts or pdfs. New content is added weekly, so the Academy ensures advisers are kept up to date with all the latest developments. Offering advisers the facility to record CPD provides them with a clear and easy means of seeing how much they have done so far, and how many hours are left to complete. It has been a busy first year and we hope that more DA advisers will take up the opportunity to use the Academy and take control of their CPD.”

Charly Higman, Mortgage & Protection Director at Paradigm member firm, TFA Trusted Financial Advice, said:

“This is an excellent tool which is perfect for new starters and competent advisers who want to pick and choose development material; we encourage all of our advisers to utilise it for accessing and recording their CPD activity. It covers a wide range of items from ‘reading a credit report’ to ‘buy-to-let taxation and top slicing’ using several mediums such as webinars, live events and podcasts. This is a great way for lenders and providers to add value to an adviser’s business, particularly as it’s all stored in one place and when complete can be recorded in a bespoke CPD log.”

For more information on Paradigm Mortgage Services please visit: www.paradigmortgages.com