Can an incorrectly issued certificate undermine the fulfillment of the obligation of professional development?

Obligation to improve professional skills by persons active on the insurance brokerage market referred to in Art. 12 sec. 1 of the Act of 15 December 2017 on the distribution of insurance & nbsp; It has been operating for several years. The PFSA monitors the manner of performing this obligation, and in the event of violations of the provisions, it may take advantage of its supervisory measures. It is worth remembering that an incorrectly issued certificate of training may also result in failure to pass the training obligation.

Additional explanations and recommendations to the Act are included in the following documents: the position of the KNF Office regarding the implementation of the obligation to improve skills of 12.02.2020 and the KNF Communication on the effects of failure to fulfill the obligation to improve professional skills of 23/06/2020. (The above-mentioned legal grounds are also the source material in this article).

The inspections carried out by the Polish Financial Supervision Authority and the recommendations provided as a consequence showed the industry how seriously and scrupulous the obligation of vocational training – commonly known as IDD training, should be treated.

There is one element in this whole process, still generating difficulties and interpretative difficulties – certificates confirming the implementation of a minimum 15-hour obligation, the detailed characteristics of which have been specified in the Act.
Meanwhile, the market is experiencing chaos through various practices and irregularities in this matter.

Certificates – what’s problematic about them?

As an entity that provides training in the IDD area, and thus issuing certificates and confectioning certificates for here, we have a cross-sectional knowledge of the difficulties caused by irregularities, shortcomings or simply a multitude their patterns.

It should start with the fact that the topic of difficulties with certificates has 3 perspectives and depends on the business side:

• the training institution / issuing the certificate,
• trained person (OFWCA / broker)
• the person directly analyzing the certificate.

The act clearly defines what data is to be included in the training certificate. Meanwhile, due to the multitude of training entities operating on the market, we come across many certificate patterns, which does not facilitate the analysis and management of them. Additionally, there are many errors in the certificates:

• No electronic signature in the case of e-learning training.
• No data required: name, date of birth or incorrect date (e.g. 01/01/1900), number of hours of training or in minutes, type of training: e-learning / stationary training, date / training stationary.
• There is no data from the trainee.
• A title of training that cannot be easily qualified for a given department / group of insurance
  (eg ZKJ).

It is not a requirement to provide the department and group of insurance to which training is eligible – however, taking into account Conclusion of insurance contracts from various departments, groups and types of insurance – & nbsp; In our opinion, it becomes necessary to provide the department for which the training is eligible.

The electronic signature required under the certificate of e-learning training is controversial. according to the position of the Polish Financial Supervision Authority of 20/02/2020 – for insufficient and not meeting the criteria provided for by the Act on Documents that “…They do not contain the signature of the person issuing the document (in accordance with Art. 6 u.d.u. in the case of vocational training in the form of e-learning) “ where: u.d.u. It does not contain a definition of an electronic signature. It is included in the Regulation (EU) No 910/2014 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the internal market and repealing the Directive 1999/93 / EC (OJ L 257, 28.8.2014, p. 73–114), hereinafter referred to as: Regulation. Art. 3 point 10 of the Regulation It defines an electronic signature as “data in electronic form that is attached or logically linked to other electronic data, and which are used by the signer as a signature”.
There are different interpretations in the market. We accepted the above. However, their multitude does not make it easier for people checking certificates.

The trainees are required to provide certificates to the distributor / row. It is worth checking the correctness of the documents in advance and storing them in one place, bearing in mind that someone will check them, analyze them and determine whether the obligation has been fulfilled. Therefore, it is worth eliminating errors: no electronic signature (e-learning), ZIP / password file, document section (e.g. only one page that cannot be matched to a specific document), the document does not apply to vocational training, document scan / e-learning / vice versa Scanned, applies to section I / II / III (depending on where it distributes products). And the most common: document duplicate – which means that the same document is sent many times.

To sum up: let’s respect the time of all participants of the process. Let’s try to unify the certificates for easier reading and analysis. Let’s add redundant fields in the light of the act, but provide full knowledge and make it easier to manage the analysis.

Let’s use patterns that will allow you to easily verify the correctness of the document and then classify it as meeting a certain number of hours for a given OFWCA.

Joanna Jastrzębska
Member of the Management Board of Eofwca.pl

The article was published in the issue of Gazeta Ubezpieczeniowa No. 27-28 / 2023 on 3.07.2023