So whatever your activity, if it’s relevant to your career and you can explain how it’s applied at work, then it counts towards your CPD.
The great thing about CPD is that you can use a variety of different ways to achieve your goals. It’s not all about attending training courses. You could include:
Here are a few real-world examples of how you could put your CPD activities into practise.
Attend an ACT briefing on OTC derivative regulation, a topic you have identified as one of your CPD learning objectives.
Update your knowledge on managing pension risk and spend time reading and researching the topic.
Research a new subject area in preparation for the delivery of a presentation to colleagues. The time spent researching counts towards your CPD. You can also count delivering your presentation, if you have identified ‘presentation skills’ as a CPD objective.
Hear from members about why personal development is important and what mechanisms they uses to ensure their professional development is kept on track.
Corporate treasury is a dynamic and diverse environment and I believe that analytical and presentation skills combined with project management experience are required for an individual to be a well-rounded treasury professional.
The analytical skills help in identifying and analyzing risk exposures as well as discovering risk mitigation solutions. The technical skills are very important given that the risk management as well as financing tools available to the treasury team require technical knowledge and expertise. The communication and presentation skills are very relevant in relation to dealings with both internal (senior management, accounting etc) but also with external relationships (banks, investors, rating agencies etc). Project management is important given that many treasury projects require engagement with multiple stakeholders.
I started fairly recently. I use the word document that is available on the website as I find this a flexible way of recording what I am doing – and it is easy to pull up whenever I need it.
The qualification process as well as the magazine, conferences and seminars provide the opportunity to build on the core skills and continuously refresh and improve upon them.
In addition to that, through the different events provided, there are lots of opportunities for sharing ideas and discussing considerations and trends with the wider treasury community.
I think reflection is very important as it helps me to understand what forms of learning work for me. I find regular attendance at ACT events (seminars, training, conferences) work well – and I always ensure I have a ‘take home’ message at the end of the event to focus my learning.
Having to focus on my professional development has helped me to assess areas for improvements on my skills set and the tools available to address those so that I continuously work towards becoming more efficient.
I’d say in most organisations treasury is the limbs of the organisation. It makes things happen - such as funding, investing, foreign exchange, trade finance, cash management and most importantly payments. Treasury responsibilities do not often make headline news but they underpin the financial stability of any company.
Having a keen eye and understanding the environment you work in and especially what external developments may impact your department’s activities and/or your company’s business is of key importance. Given the myriad of information available it is not always straight-forward to identify, analyse and assess what the outcome of these developments may be. Lately, the implementation of regulatory developments such as E.M.I.R has required a firm understanding of the situation, and keeping up-to-date with these developments is so important.
I have always been aware of the need to keep up-to-date. The ACT’s new scheme has helped me to formalise this. I rely on the ACT’s CPD log system to capture, review and update my objectives -the system is straightforward to use and make updates to.
As a routine, I review the objectives on a quarterly basis to make sure they are still valid and that I don’t forget them! I sometimes realise that there have been activities which I have undertaken that qualify for CPD, so I add these.
For example, I recently attended a leadership program course at our Head office where I joined interactive lectures on change, crisis, learning, diversity and management. Whilst there was no mention of FRA’s or IRS’s I was pleasantly surprised that such an activity counted towards my ACT CPD.
I try to attend the regional group meetings as the subjects covered are usually current and matters that I need to know about. I consider this a small investment to acquire knowledge that I can impart to the people I work with.
I have found that CPD related activities provide useful input into my performance review process including appraisal and bonus objectives. At review time it is not always easy to think of what development activities I have undertaken thoughout the year but by actively identifying and registering them, the job is a whole lot easier.