In a bid to change the face of insurance education, the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance (
ANZIIF) has announced its new education model at the recently held Australian Insurance Industry Awards in Sydney.
The relaunch of the ANZIIF Skills Units follows a 2015 partnership with NIBA on the delivery of broker education, and sees traditional education from semester-long study periods disaggregated and condensed into 4-6 week units based around required industry skills.
“We’re changing the way education is done in insurance,”
Prue Willsford, ANZIIF CEO, said.
“Instead of traditional ‘talk and test’ learning where the focus is on short-term memorisation, we’re using explorative methods of teaching to ensure students truly understand the concepts they’re studying and can directly apply that knowledge to the workplace.”
The education model − completely done online − combines audio, visual, and interactive tasks; and comprises of stand-alone units to allow students to tailor their study to meet their career and organisation goals. Units have also been mapped to insurance roles and experience levels for those who want more direction.
Students learn by filtering information, selecting outcomes, organising and integrating data, and reflecting on prior knowledge. To pass a unit, students must successfully complete an interactive real-world scenario they would likely face at a typical day at work by analysing a situation, interacting with a virtual consumer, and solving the problem to the satisfaction of insurer and insured, ANZIIF explained in a statement.
“In consultation with industry, we identified issues that organisations felt weren’t served by traditional education offerings. Namely, that the competencies taught in existing education options weren’t aligned to what the industry actually needed and that study took too long in a market where the ability to adapt quickly is crucial,” said Willsford.
“With traditional development pipelines being eroded, the industry told us it needed a way to fill talent gaps and up skill employees in a timely and effective manner. Our new offering provides that.”
Individuals could also benefit from the education offering, as it offers them the flexibility to study and complete the units of their choice whenever and wherever they want in a fun, fast, and non-intrusive way, allowing for work-life balance and greater understanding of concepts.
The education offering is competitively priced, at AU$375/NZ$415 for the average 4-6 week unit.
Over 140 units will be rolled out continuously throughout 2016 and 2017, with current units available now at the
ANZIIF website.
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