Promoting the profession
As a professional body we are at the forefront of promoting careers in insurance and financial services, to ensure we attract, retain and develop the best talent the UK has to offer. We are also committed to increasing public trust in our profession and giving back to the local communities that we serve.
The CII conducts a series of outreach initiatives across schools, colleges, and universities.
Schools & colleges
Discover Risk: Promoting our profession within schools, colleges and universities locally has never been easier, thanks to the Discover Risk. As well as introducing students to the world of risk, this game is designed to increase students' employability skills such as team working, communication and problem-solving. Equally, they create opportunities for local employers to build links with their future talent.
The Discover Risk workshop involves 20-35 students, takes approximately 90 minutes to run and splits students into teams to work through several scenarios.
My Personal Finance Skills: The My Personal Finance Skills initiative delivers free financial education workshops to schools & colleges across the UK through a network of Education Champions (volunteer members).
Workshops cover important personal finance topics such as the first payslip, staying safe from scams, making decisions and risk (relating to insurance) and much more. The initiative also includes the Discover Fortunes workshops that is like Discover Risk but targeted at personal finance.
The CII can provide full materials and training for any local institutes that wish to deliver one of these workshops and diversify their offer to local school &c colleges.
The aim of this programme is increasing financial capability, building public trust in the profession, and giving back to the community. Now, more than ever, financial resilience is vital.
NB: Covid-19 & outreach in schools/colleges
Due to the ongoing pandemic, programme delivery is moving online for the time being with workshops being delivered via a school’s platform of choice. Material has been adapted for use virtually.
Discover Risk Training Webinar
Discover Fortunes Training Webinar
Higher Education – Education Partnerships
For the Academic year 2020/2021 and going forward a very different landscape due to the Covid19 pandemic is expected. For many universities, much of their delivery scheduled for the academic year and beyond will be on-line with limited time on campus.
To that end, Careers and Employability in Insurance and Financial Planning webinars will be rolled out to align with university timetabling. From May-July 2020 four very successful webinars took place and determined how the formerly face-to-face seminar would be received; great feedback was received from students in attendance.
Where CII/PFS members wish to participate, a high-level outline is summarised below. The commitment for professionals from both insurance and financial planning is 75mins of their professional time predominantly between 12-2pm of a weekday. The content follows the following format:
The Education Partnerships Manager works closely with local insurance institute and personal finance society members to enable engagement with the local universities in respect of the above approach. The Education Partnerships Manager encourages students to become members of the CII/PFS. The benefits of the webinars are:
See an overview site on careers in insurance or financial planning primarily for students and new talent to the profession https://www.ciistepforward.co.uk/ which is a resource used to a) introduce the profession and b) enable expression of interest for membership.
Finally, any queries on introduction and working with universities, contact the Education Partnerships Manager at EducationPartnershipCoordinator@cii.co.uk
The CII supporting local institutes
The CII can supply a PowerPoint presentation and supporting materials for those wishing to attend a career fair or present at a local school, college, or university. In addition to this, the CII can supply any relevant materials to assist in the training and delivery of the My Personal Finance Skills initiative.
Whenever local institutes plan something, we encourage you to contact us so that we know what is taking place and to ensure there is no cross-over with our own activities.
In addition, local institutes could help engage with key organisations to provide work experience and/or taster opportunities for those students who are particularly interested in gaining experience.
Contact us
For more information speak to your Regional Membership Manager or email George Tsounias (Education Relationship Manager) at george.tsounias@cii.co.uk (for schools/colleges).