A revised draft of the Code of Professional Conduct for Authorised Financial Advisers was released last week.

It has tweaked the CPD requirements so advisers need 30 structured hours over two years.

But to count as structured hours, the training must be provided by a qualified educator or relevant subject matter expert, and must have identifiable aims and outcomes that fit with the adviser’s development plan. It must not be training designed purely to promote a particular product.

IFA president Nigel Tate said there was a fine line between technical training and promoting a particular product, particularly when it came to insurance products and providers offering the information that advisers needed to compare them. “There’s an area of greyness about that.”

But he said the removal of the reference to “training provided by professional bodies, DAOs and QFEs” from the code meant that there would not be such a lot of discussion over which organisations qualified.

Having to provide evidence of the quality of the training provided would be good for the industry, he said.

“Irrespective of who provides it, if the training meets those standards, I’m happy. I don’t think we should restrict it to tertiary providers and DAOs. But the problem has been who is a professional body? There are several entities setting themselves up as professional bodies. I’m of the belief that getting rid of the professional bodies reference will be good for the real professional bodies.”

He said the IFA would be seeking clarity on the definitions of “qualified educator” and “relevant subject matter expert”. “How do you determine that?”

Tate said it seemed strange that training that counted as structured for one adviser because it fitted in as part of their development plan, would not then qualify as structured for someone sitting next to them who had a different plan. “Each course can swing from being structured to unstructured, depending on the recipient.”