We are well and truly into Spring, fast approaching summer, and ALUCA has had a very busy quarter. Each ALUCA Sub-Group have held their Professional Development Days. My congratulations and thanks to everyone involved in making these events such a success. I personally valued the many relevant insights and learnings in addition to the networking opportunities with other Life Insurance professionals who are all facing the same industry challenges. These events showcase what ALUCA is all about educating, developing and connecting ALUCA members.
Strategy
There are a lot of exciting things happening at ALUCA right now which we’ve been sharing via our recent emails, leading on from our strategy day. ALUCA is committed to being wholly independent and member-led, and believe that the time is right for us to share the significant IP we have invested in the ALUCA life insurance competency framework so that the industry can respond positively and pragmatically to the recommendations contained in the Hayne Royal Commission report. We are not only dedicated to the ongoing education and professionalism of our members but also to raising the professionalism of the industry. I’ll let Jim, our Chair comment more about this.
Education
Education is key to what we do. We are committed to continuing to invest and evolve our competency framework that underpins ALUCA’s accredited Certified Professional Life Insurance membership which is continuing to grow. Some organisations now have 54% of their members who are accredited – congratulations to them – and Victoria have more accredited members than NSW with WA, being the state with the most accredited members ,so the challenges is on!
We still get a lot of enquiries about how ALUCA’s accredited Certified Professional Life Insurance (CPLI) membership works – it provides recognition for both your formal education and for the competencies, knowledge and skills you have gained during your years as a life insurance underwriting, claims and or rehabilitation professional. Starting as an affiliate member, moving to an associate, associate fellow and fellow. We’ve worked on updating this to ensure that members wanting to upgrade understand that they need to have both educational qualifications which tie back to the Australian Skills Qualifications and standards – in addition to years spent building their competencies in Life Insurance. You need both to qualify and if you have more years of experience than education you can apply for the lower of the 2 or the other way around, so if an Allied Health graduate comes in with only 3 years LI experience then they can only apply for the lower level. Fellow level is the highest and hardest – we have defined what the paper should be versus an article which you can view on the website or just call or email us to answer any questions you may have.
We’re doing a lot of work to help encourage members to gain professional educational qualifications. You can learn more about where to gain qualifications on the ALUCA website. We’re also working on developing a training plan template to assist members identify their capability gaps and complete these via 5 key CPD areas similar to the FASEA requirements for advisers. We’ll be sharing more about this over the coming months.
Other exciting developments include the Board signing off on further evolving and updating the ALUCA website and Member centre as well as providing a Learning Management System to provide 24/7 educational content in partnership with our key sponsors. In addition to a Womens Forum, Educational Advisory committee and mentoring program.
I look forward to catching up with you all at an ALUCA end of year event or at the upcoming ALUCA AGM on November 21st.
Warm regards
Amanda McKernan
ALUCA CEO
ceo@aluca.com.au
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