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The Parker Report THERE’S A NEW CONTINUING EDUCATION SHERIFF IN TOWN By Kevin McGillicuddy - JT Parker & Associates advertisement Effective February 17, 2009, all agent and adjuster continuing education course providers for Texas licensees will be required to comply with a new system for submitting courses for approval or renewal and for reporting course attendance to the Texas Department of Insurance. Although the administrative burden of compliance with the new system will fall on CE providers, there are also significant new procedures that will impact any such licensees of the TDI who must comply with continuing education requirements. The new reporting requirements will not affect any licensee who is grandfathered from CE requirements. The TDI has contracted with Pearson Vue to administer a number of its licensee testing and continuing education compliance tasks. Pearson Vue has in turn subcontracted with Sircon Corporation to handle the submission of new and revised continuing education course offerings, as well as the submission of course attendance rosters. Although paper attendance rosters will be accepted, the emphasis is to encourage CE providers to submit course attendance data electronically. This will allow the TDI to monitor, in real time, the courses that agents and adjusters have completed. The new system will also allow agents and adjusters to view their own records on line, but will not permit licensees to print out completion certificates. The new system for tracking course attendance will allow the TDI to perform automated checks for compliance with CE requirements once the initial two-year cycle of new course attendance reports have been submitted to the TDI. Once two years have passed from the effective date of this new process, all subsequent license renewals will be subject to automated checks for whether all CE attendance requirements have been met. At that time, a licensee who is out of compliance with the applicable continuing education requirements will be subject to a penalty of $50.00 for each hour that the licensee is deficient, as is now the case. The difference is that after two years, the TDI will have all course attendance records on-line and will be able to determine noncompliance automatically. Courses that were completed prior to February 17, 2009 will not have to be reported to the TDI electronically, which is the reason that it will take two years for the automated compliance audit portion of this program to be fully implemented. However, any provider of CE courses and any licensee subject to continuing education requirements should be aware that the only evidence of successful course attendance that the Department of Insurance will accept for courses completed on or after February 17, 2009 will be the reporting that CE course providers must now submit through Sircon. If an adjuster or agent completes a course on or after this date and has a certificate of completion, the TDI will not consider the paper certificate as evidence of completion. The TDI will consider only the properly submitted completion information that the course provider submits. Typically, Sircon will match course completion data by the licensee’s last name and license number, so those two elements are critical to the process. Make sure the licensee’s last name is recorded exactly as contained on the license. Otherwise, the automated system maintained by Sircon will kick out the record and credit will not be given until correctly submitted. Notably, course providers have only thirty days following completion of a course to notify the TDI that a licensee has completed a course. Providers will be able to print out and mail or email completion certificates only after the attendance information has been submitted to Sircon. We suspect that a number of CE providers are still unaware of the new requirements, so for the foreseeable future, it would be appropriate to check with any course provider to make sure the provider is aware of these new requirements, and providers should be given contact information for each course attendee so completion certificates can be delivered following the course. Do yourself and the provider a favor and ask the CE provider of any course you take whether the provider is aware of the new requirements, as the provider can also be fined $100 for each improperly completed certificate. The automated system will also be able to track course completion in states with reciprocal agreements with Texas, as long as the reciprocal state also uses this system and the course provider reports to the reciprocal state. This memo is intended as a somewhat high-level overview of the new process. More information on this and other subjects relating to licensing and continuing education can be found at the Pearson Vue Texas Insurance CE link at ASISVCS - www.asisvcs.com See also the Sircon Corporation website for links for CE providers and agents (including adjusters) at SIRCON - www.sircon.com Submitted by Kevin McGillicuddy J.T. Parker & Associates www.parkerclaims.com

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