Larry Barton didn’t pull any punches in 2007 when he was quoted in Best’s Review denouncing “rogue designations” in the life insurance and financial planning industries.
The president of The American College, Bryn Mawr, Pa., believes the “alphabet soup” of professional designations in his industry is “completely, wholly out of control.”
Barton and others worry that few consumers are able to distinguish between initials after an advisor’s name that represent designations earned after prolonged, rigorous study, and those earned after relatively short sessions.
Barton is quoted as saying: “[Consumers] would be horrified if they knew that when you claim to be certified or chartered . . . you merely went to a [hotel] for two and a half days watching presentations and took a multiple-choice test that 95% to 100% of those who walked out the door passed.”
There are also a growing number of designations in property/casualty insurance. Some of them involve years of study and standardized national examinations; others award designations, or components of designations, after brief, intensive conferences; and still others can be earned through online instruction and examinations.
From all appearances, however, there seems to be far less controversy over designations in P/C insurance than in the life insurance or financial planning fields, especially among carriers.
For P/C insurers, the evolution of insurance training presents new strategic choices about which designations will most benefit a company and the individuals within it:
- Those that provide a broad background and wide perspective on the overall development of insurance industry policies and practices; or
- More tightly focused programs that teach professionals the mechanics of what they need to know to achieve immediate objectives in defined fields.
These choices are not necessarily exclusive of each other, and many individuals will pursue both types of designations, and others that fall somewhere along the spectrum.
But time and training dollars are limited, and companies and individuals are increasingly called upon to make a choice between designations that all have some merit.
For P/C company personnel, the principal designations sought for years have been those offered by the American Institute for CPCU and the Insurance Institute of America, companion organizations housed on the same campus in Malvern, Pa.
Together, those two organization have filled a role generally equivalent to that played by The American College in life insurance. Like The American College, the Institutes are a not-for-
profit creation of the insurance industry governed by a board composed primarily of insurance company executives.
For decades, the Institutes have enjoyed something close to a monopoly on the training and education of P/C company staff, particularly in core operations like underwriting, claims, and compliance.
The Institutes have held this position in part because of the role they have been given in defining what were to be core competencies of P/C operations other than actuarial work, a specialized profession for which candidates seek designations from the American Academy of Actuaries and Casualty Actuarial Society.
Tens of thousands of P/C professionals still take “Institute” examinations every year, a total that far exceeds those of any other provider. But, in recent years, the number of Institute test takers has leveled off, while some company professionals have elected to pursue some new designations from new providers that have emerged in recent years.
One of those organizations is the Insurance Skills Center (ISC), a training organization originally sponsored by IBA West, a California affiliate of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America.
The ISC sponsors two designations that have grown rapidly in the few years since they were introduced:
- The Agribusiness and Farm Insurance Specialist (AFIS); and
- The Certified Insurance Specialist in Construction (CISC).
Like some of the life designations Barton laments, these designations can be earned by attending three or more 2-day conferences and passing an examination that most of the other attendees pass. In addition, candidates are allowed to refer to books of policy forms while taking the examinations.
None of that detracts from the value of the designations, or their growing appeal, says Laurie Infantino, president of the ISC.
“What separates our designations is that they are industry-specific,” she says. “Other designations, while we support them, are not necessarily industry-specific.
“Our designees are not mainstream insurance people,” Infantino continues. “They are ag people and construction people. We’re informing agricultural and contractor insurance specialists what they need to know to be specialists in their fields.”
As for using forms books in examinations, Infantino says “We’re not here to teach them to memorize. We’re here to teach them to use resources.
“We have standardized exams. They’re industry-specific and very intensive. They’re not intended to be simple.”
Even though the program is rooted in an agent-sponsored organization, a “good number” of company people now attend ISC programs, and several big agricultural writers have begun to require staff members to get the AFIS designation.
ISC’s construction designation is competing with the new Construction Risk Insurance Specialist (CRIS) designation introduced by the International Risk Management Institute (IRMI). The CRIS designation can be earned online.
In response to the success of new approaches to training and changing needs of companies, the Institutes in 2007 introduced a new method of developing and deploying its curriculum.
Rather than have insurance curricula defined in CPCU textbooks and then repackaged in other textbooks, the Institutes are moving to define building blocks of insurance knowledge called “learning objects” that can be organized in different formats.
In essence, learning objects are modules of information with educational objectives and testing criteria that can be utilized in textbooks, online courses, or customized company training materials.
“The learning object approach recognizes that we need to adapt the way we develop curriculum so that we can deliver materials in a variety of different ways that have been expressed to us by our customers,” says Peter Miller, president of the Institutes.
“The learning object approach allows us to accomplish with one development cycle the writing of a textbook and the equivalent of an online version of the same material. The quality of our content will stay the same, but the process we’ll use to develop the content will change.
“Our customers are asking us to take our textbooks and, in some cases, unbundle the content so we can meet specific needs more readily, more effectively, and more efficiently.”
The Institutes encounter more requests from companies for specialized training, Miller says.
“I went into one insurance company, and they told me, ‘We just hired some new CPAs, and nothing on the CPA exam talked about statutory accounting. Can you give us something right now to get those people up to speed?’
“I’ve had reinsurers say they have people who were in treaty who are now going into facultative and they need something just to get up to speed quickly.”
Shorter, more focused designations are welcomed by some carriers.
“It would be good if there were designations that could be accomplished in a shorter period of time on specific insurance subject matter,” says James Guynn, executive vice president of Augusta Mutual Ins. Co., Staunton, Va. “The sense of accomplishment gives a person the inspiration to continue achieving.
“Having to spread a designation out over a long period of time defeats the student’s sense of accomplishment.”
Tom Claude, vice president and secretary of Pharmacists Mutual Ins. Co., Algona, Iowa, concurs.
“Not everyone wants to tackle the CPCU program,” Claude says, “but they might be willing to take on some other program that might not be as long or detailed.”
That said, Claude adds that, “you do not want to have the designation ‘watered down.’ They need to mean something not only to the individual but also to the general public.”
Ultimately, the decisions by individuals and companies regarding which designations to pursue will depend on how much they value an understanding of the “received wisdom” of the industry, and how pressed they are for information to meet immediate operational needs.
“There will always those trying to understand how it came to be,” says Chris Amrhein, a prominent insurance educator, who serves on a national advisory committee for the Institutes. “Others are buried by their work and say, ‘Tell me what I need to know to move on.’”
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