More power to e-learning

Many readers will be familiar with Broker Assess, the online learning and assessment tool for broking firms, developed by the CII and Biba.

Broker Assess has recently undergone a major upgrade, with more content and more powerful management tools. It forms a key component of the CII's new Broker Academy which was launched in February – see www.cii.co.uk/brokeracademy.The Broker Academy is essentially a 'one stop shop' training and development facility for brokers.

AXA is partnering the CII and Biba in the development of Broker Academy and, in early March, users of AXA Campus were upgraded, free of charge, to the new Broker Assess. Existing Broker Assess users (mainly Biba members) will be transferring across in May.

Broker Assess is now by far the most popular online learning and assessment tool for broking firms who are serious about developing their people.

Overwhelmingly positive
After some initial nervousness about the changes, the response from users and admin-istrators to the new site has been overwhelm-ingly positive. So what makes the new Broker Assess so attractive to both users and administrators?

At its launch in March the new Broker Assess contained over 250 technical and regulatory e-learning modules designed to cover the topics required by brokers.

To assist with competency assessment there is a wide range of pre-set tests at module and subject level and the library of these continues to be developed. As you would expect from the CII, the question banks are of industry-leading standard.

In addition, a unique feature of the system is that administrators can design and set their own single or multi-subject assessments. These can be of a length, breadth and degree of difficulty to suit individual employees or business teams.

Assessment questions are also linked to learning so identified areas of weakness can be developed into strengths. This feature is particularly useful when assessing the competence and technical knowledge of individuals who work across several product lines or specialisms.

A new range of business and interpersonal skills courses, Business Essentials, has been added to Broker Assess.

These include key management skills required by supervisors and managers in their everyday role. In addition there is a new range of health and safety topics. These cover all aspects of workplace safety including manual handling, VDU and workstation safety and stress at work.

One of the key features of the new Broker Assess is a study planner. This enables individual users to have their own tailored and pre-set training plan based on their own development needs.

The planner can be tailored for learning and assessment to be completed over a set period of time and reminders can be emailed daily, weekly or monthly, at the choice of the individual.

In addition, the firm's administrator can use the planner feature to add learning and assessments to an individual's planner.

There is also a continuing professional development (CPD) recording system via the learning and development log. This is automatically linked to learning undertaken on the system and also allows all other learning to be recorded. In addition the system will enable CII members to transfer details from their own learning and development log on Broker Assess to the CII's online CPD system.

All of the above combine to make the new Broker Assess system a market leading product.

However, this is just the start. We are making a considerable investment in continually improving the system to ensure that it remains the industry leading online training and competence tool for brokers.

The next set of learning titles will be announced shortly along with an invitation to all Broker Assess users to nominate additional courses for development.

The aim is to ensure that the development of the product is fully influenced by the brokers who use it. Broker Assess will evolve in step with the ever-changing insurance broking marketplace.

Someone once asked the question "What if I invest in training my staff – and they leave?" The reply by someone who understood the true value of competent workforce was, "What if you don't invest in them and they stay?"

To give you a taster we have printed below a selection of questions on a single topic that every broker needs to be aware of: warranties, conditions and exclusions.

All the questions are set at level 2 – intermediate. Try them and test your own knowledge. The answers appear below with commentary. IT

Steve Dutton is with the Broker Academy

So, if you haven't tried the system yet and would like to see how it could work for you, do contact the support team on 0844 800 8559 or email them at support@brokerassess.co.uk .

To view the Q & A please click here