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The FSMA tightens the rules for the continuing professional education of intermediaries

Press release

The FSMA (Financial Services and Markets Authority) is launching initiatives aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of the rules regarding the continuing professional education of intermediaries. Discussions of this matter will therefore be launched with the financial sector.

‘The FSMA, along with the relevant professional associations, attaches great importance to the training of intermediaries’, affirms its chairman, Jean-Paul Servais. ‘Suitable training’, he notes, ‘helps ensure that consumers will be given correct and appropriate information’.

Intermediaries in insurance, reinsurance and banking and investment services are required to participate regularly in continuing education to upgrade their professional skills[1]. In 2008, rules of conduct and a sectoral code were drawn up by the sectors concerned, in order to set out concretely what this requirement entails.

Now, three years later, the FSMA has completed an evaluation of the practical application of the continuing education requirement. The results indicate that the rules of conduct for the insurance sector and the code for the financial sector generally speaking constitute a useful framework for fulfilling the legal requirement of regular continuing professional education.

However, the FSMA takes the view that some aspects of the rules of conduct need to be clarified, in particular as regards the list of eligible continuing education courses and their contents.

The FSMA will therefore shortly begin discussions with the relevant sectors in view of further enhancing the effectiveness of continuing professional education. Information to this effect will be published in due time on the FSMA website (www.fsma.be).

We wish to take this opportunity to remind intermediaries registered as at 1 January 2009 on the list then maintained by the CBFA that they (with the exception of insurance sub-agents) must obtain a total of 30 continuing education points by 31 December 2011. Insurance sub-agents registered as at 1 January 2010 must obtain a total of 20 continuing education points by 31 December 2012 (for further details, please see the website of the FSMA : French or Dutch).

 

 

[1]     Law of 27 March 1995 on insurance and reinsurance intermediation and on the distribution of insurance, Article 11, § 4bis, and Royal Decree of 1 July 2006 implementing the law of 22 March 2006 on intermediation in banking and investment services and on the distribution of financial instruments, Article 7, § 2, last paragraph.