The passion our members have for being part of an effective professional body that can help them develop their careers, meet consumers’ needs and raise the profile of the profession was clear for all to see at our recent AGM.
Following the AGM, I shared details of our plans for a consultation exercise on membership matters.
The breadth and depth of this consultation reflects my personal commitment for the CII Group to understand and address our membership’s priorities and needs.
We understand the pace of progress for the insurance profession is relentless – with customer expectations, increased data, technology innovation, insurance product innovation, competition for talent and regulatory influence all driving change.
Consumers expectations for customer service relates less to the experience they would have with your peers and more with what they would get from other companies such as the likes of Amazon and Netflix.
To ensure the CII can help professionals sprinting fast to keep ahead of the pace of change, in the next few weeks members will be able to attend Local Institute and Regional Committee meetings and speak to me, the professional body’s management team and members of the Board directly.
We will also be consulting later this year on the vision for our societies.
The results of the consultation will be used to ensure the CII is delivering the support, educational material, skills development, and formal qualifications that insurance professionals need to achieve a rewarding career and assist the public – to ensure everyone can sprint at the right speed right now as the pace of change for the profession is not a 100m dash but a far longer race.
Early next year the CII will share with the profession how we will use the feedback we have received to improve what insurance professionals receive from us and how we engage with them.
The membership consultation will build on work the CII Group has already undertaken to produce a professional map.
We have spent more than a year interviewing and collating the views of more than 200 market and HR leaders to map the skills, knowledge and behaviours they believe businesses and individuals will need now and in the future.
The professional map will be used to ensure our existing and future learning, CPD and qualifications meet the profession’s needs and help businesses and individuals to identify and address knowledge and skills gaps.
This consultation is taking place because I know that more work is needed to improve our products and services and I also recognise that technology alone will not make us the profession’s partner in development.
We have moved swiftly in the last five years. Back in 2016 we had an ageing heritage building, physical exam sittings and purely face-to-face events. We are now a modern, digitally able group with e-mentoring, webinars and online assessments that allow professionals to continue to develop their skills and knowledge no matter what is going on in the wider world.
But I know we need to continue to move swiftly in the months and years ahead and we will continually need to work to future-proof our services if we are to assist our members to do the same for their own businesses. We are working on new delivery platforms for exams, learning, events and membership and key to achieving these developments is getting a 360-degree view of our members, which is why I hope they will engage with us through this consultation exercise.
