Continuing professional development is a requirement for most insurance and reinsurance professionals. Here is what CPD means, why it matters, what activities count, and how to make the most of your CPD hours.
CPD stands for Continuing Professional Development. It is the process of maintaining, improving, and broadening your professional knowledge and skills throughout your career. In the insurance and reinsurance industry, CPD is not optional. Most professional bodies require their members to complete a minimum number of CPD hours each year.
The Chartered Insurance Institute, for example, requires 35 hours of CPD annually. Other bodies, including actuarial institutes, the Chartered Institute of Loss Adjusters, and various regulatory authorities, have their own requirements. The specific number of hours and the types of activity that qualify vary, but the principle is consistent: professionals are expected to keep learning.
It is easy to treat CPD as an administrative burden. Fill in the hours, submit the record, move on. But there is a reason professional bodies mandate it, and it goes beyond compliance.
The insurance market is changing. New risk categories like cyber are growing rapidly. Climate change is altering the frequency and severity of natural catastrophe events. Capital markets and insurance are converging through structures like catastrophe bonds and collateralised reinsurance. Regulatory frameworks are evolving across jurisdictions.
Professionals who stop learning fall behind. CPD is the mechanism that ensures the people advising clients, pricing risk, managing claims, and making underwriting decisions have current, relevant knowledge. For individuals, it is also a signal to employers and clients. A professional who can evidence structured, relevant learning is demonstrating commitment to their role and their career.
Accredited courses, workshops, conferences, webinars, and formal training programmes. These are the easiest to evidence and are typically given the most weight by professional bodies. Look for CPD-accredited providers certified by recognised bodies like The CPD Certification Service.
Studying for and completing professional exams or certifications. This includes actuarial qualifications, CII exams, specialist diplomas, and accredited programmes in areas like insurance-linked securities, risk management, or compliance.
Attending industry events, participating in working groups, contributing to professional publications, or presenting at conferences. These activities build knowledge and demonstrate engagement with the wider market.
Taking on new responsibilities, working on unfamiliar product lines, cross-training with other teams, or leading projects that require you to develop new skills. Some professional bodies accept this as unstructured CPD.
Reading industry reports, research papers, regulatory updates, or specialist publications. While harder to evidence than structured courses, self-directed study is a legitimate and valuable form of CPD when it is relevant and documented.
Mentoring junior colleagues, delivering internal training, or contributing to educational programmes. Teaching others deepens your own understanding and is recognised by many professional bodies as a valid CPD activity.
The professionals who get the most value from CPD are the ones who treat it as a career investment rather than a compliance task. Choose activities that are relevant to where you want your career to go, not just where it has been. If you are working in reinsurance and the market is increasingly using ILS structures, learning about catastrophe bonds and collateralised reinsurance is directly relevant. If you are an underwriter seeing more cyber risk in your portfolio, CPD in cyber insurance makes sense.
Structured, accredited courses are the most efficient way to accumulate CPD hours because the learning outcomes, assessment, and evidence are built in. A 50-hour accredited programme gives you a significant block of CPD with a clear record, as opposed to assembling dozens of smaller activities.
Keep a record as you go. Most professional bodies require you to log activities, and some audit their members. Recording what you did, when, and what you learned is easier in real time than reconstructing it at year end.
Insurance-linked securities sit at the intersection of insurance, reinsurance, capital markets, and risk modelling. For professionals working in any of these areas, ILS knowledge is increasingly relevant. Understanding how catastrophe bonds are structured, how triggers work, how parametric insurance differs from indemnity coverage, and how the ILS market interacts with traditional reinsurance is becoming a core competency rather than a niche specialism.
ILS101 is accredited by The CPD Certification Service and offers 50 CPD hours across five modules. The programme covers catastrophe bond mechanics, ILS pricing, trigger structures, parametric insurance, climate risk, cyber risk, and the legal architecture of ILS transactions. On completion, learners earn a CPD-Certified Diploma in Insurance-Linked Securities.
Whether you need to meet your annual CPD requirement or want to build specialist knowledge in a growing area of the market, structured ILS education is an efficient way to do both.
ILS101 is accredited by The CPD Certification Service. Study catastrophe bonds, pricing, triggers, and risk transfer at your own pace.
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