Dec 17, 2014

Two-Minute Survey: PIANY members stress problems with tracking CE credits

In our most recent Two-Minute Survey, PIANY members expressed the frustration they experience trying to stay compliant with continuing-educations credits when they possess more than one insurance license.

With the completion of the transition to birthdate licensing in 2012 (initiated in 2005), the issues that PIANY brought up in our original opposition memo to the change have come to fruition. Namely, the difficulty that this system poses for individual licensees and their employers in securing the CE credits that are necessary to license renewal. The change greatly reduces the efficiency of license renewal administration for agencies, brokerages and insurers with multiple licensees in their employ. Under the pre-birthdate licensing system, tracking the CE compliance status and license renewal process for employees was a function requiring significant time and attention at agencies, brokerages and insurance companies with multiple licensees. However, with a common license date, this process was at least predictable and routine, with well-established administrative duties, deadlines and expectations that everyone understands.

The transition to individual birthdate renewal expirations caused the loss of the efficiencies enabled by mass renewals, and created continual monitoring, follow-up and compliance headaches. As a result, keeping track of CE compliance for as many as three licenses has become extremely involved and confusing, resulting in inadvertent noncompliance and, in some cases, necessitating licensees to take duplicative CE credits to correspond with overlapping license expirations.

To address this fact, PIANY established a legislative subcommittee to explore this issue and recommend actions to address the problems experienced by agents and brokers. PIANY will pursue these changes in the 2015 legislative and regulatory session on behalf of its members.