The Canadian Securities Industry: What is a Continuing Education Course Anyways? A Quick 101

We’re coming up on 1 year (August 2024) since the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) published Bulletin 23-0096 “Proposed Clarifying Amendments to Registration and Proficiency Requirements”  refining the proficiency requirements in Rule 2600. And just in case you’re wondering, while the proposed amendments touch on continuing education, there were no substantial changes – continuing education is still a requirement to maintain your registration designation [audible sigh!] but it’s mandatory, so it’s important to know the basics. Here’s a quick 101 on the regulatory landscape.

Registered persons are dealing with the public, people’s life-savings, and the Canadian Capital Market system, so it’s important that they have high professional standards and act with integrity and in good faith: “[p]roficiency is a cornerstone of the IIROC [sic now CIRO] regulatory scheme ”. To put it simply, registered persons aren’t selling pizzas, they’re dealing with people’s money where the risks are high and so the standards of the profession need to be equally as high.

This is the definition of a continuing education course:

• “continuing education course” A single, integrated course or series of relevant courses, seminars, programs or presentations that together meet the time and content requirements for continuing education set out in Rule 2700 (see R. 2702(1)).
• Every 2-years, registered persons have continuing education requirements (see R. 2703(2)) and those courses fall under two categories:
  – 1. Compliance (10 hours); and/or
  – 2. Professional Development (20 hours) (see R. 2703; 2704(4) & (5)).
• Sometimes a registered person is exempt from continuing education requirements but only in rare circumstances depending on your category of registration (see R. 2703(5); 2704; 2745).
• It’s up to the registered person (and the Firm) to keep a list of all courses they participated in along with proof of participation (often in the form of certificates, attendance sheet or a notice of completion) (see R. 2717).
• If a registered person fails to complete their continuing education credits, they can face fines, penalties and suspension (see R. 2755) so it’s important to complete those credits.

And, really, why torture yourself when you can complete those credits in the most interesting way possible?

We think we’ve got the best continuing education courses on the market because we’ve taken the time to design them with adult learners in mind. They’re not boring and they’re designed to ensure you succeed to earn that Certificate of Completion.