Gold Seal MD Sheila Baker has backed calls from Austbrokers & IBNA Members Services (AIMS) GM Martin McAvenna for an overhaul of the way broker education is delivered.

And she says Gold Seal, a leading private provider of insurance education, is ready to contribute to a review of current programs.

“We look forward to being part of a more forward-thinking approach to review education for the industry,” Ms Baker said.

“Gold Seal has a great deal of valuable information about where brokers feel the system lets them down.”

Registered training organisation Gold Seal has provided broker education programs since 2005.

Ms Baker’s comments follow a speech by Mr McAvenna at the AIMS conference in Barcelona last month, when he challenged the National Insurance Brokers Association and the Australian and New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance, which offer competing programs, to co-operate on an improved education regime.

Ms Baker wants the wider industry to participate in talks about the future of broker education.

“The discussion needs to be a good deal broader than that which can be offered solely by the two industry bodies,” she said.

“With the debate opened up, now is the time for the industry to work together to develop a way forward that is focused on how best to turn out a generation of effectively trained operators.”

Ms Baker is adamant broker education must change.

“The future will bring challenges that the current, traditional education content is ill-equipped to deal with,” she told insuranceNEWS.com.au. “The future is so profoundly different to the past 12 years since this [Regulatory Guide 146 compliance] system began that it needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.”

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