Under the proposals financial advisers will have to do 30 hours of structured CPD credits over two years instead of 10 hours structured and 10 hours unstructured credits over one year.

Code Committee chairman David Ireland told delegates at the recent Grosvenor conference that the current approach didn’t work.

Just ticking boxes and saying you have amassed sufficient CPD credits “is not enough training for competency.”

Professional development is not just about attending events and conferences and getting credits.

Credits that count towards the proposed new rules have to fit with an adviser’s professional development plan.

He says if the credit doesn’t fit the plan then it shouldn’t count towards the 30 hour total.

“If [the event] is outside identified learning needs it doesn’t count,” he said.

However, he said that the professional development plan was a living document and could be amended to address an adviser’s changing competency needs.

Ireland was quizzed about what would count and what would not. He admitted there were some grey areas. The question advisers should be asking themselves when they consider counting a credit was: What does it do to help the adviser maintain competency?

One example he said wouldn’t count was doing a course on business accounting. While it may help the adviser their practice, it doesn’t achieve the competency objective.

He also suggested that attending product promotions and launches probably wouldn’t fit the criteria.

The Code Committee met last Tuesday to finalise version 2.0 of the code.