Personal and Professional Development (PPD) IfoA Requirements

PPD Personal and Professional Development: Road ahead for actuarial development

Personal and Professional Development (PPD) is a key component of the IFoA actuarial qualifications. To become an Associate or Fellow Actuary you need to successfully complete PPD as well as the IFoA examinations and professionalism components.

PPD allows you to demonstrate how you have applied the other skills in practice that you have gained through the IFoA examinations. It also helps IFOA to better understand the actuarial work and plan things accordingly.

It is mandated for working professional to submit PPD otherwise an incremental non-compliance fee of up to £200 would be charged. If you have submitted the PPD within 3 months after the deadline, then your fine will be revoked. Working professionals can also request to defer it provided that you have a strong reason for it like chronic illness, death of family member, working break, etc.

If you’re a full-time student or not working then you can request to defer
Personal and Professional Development (PPD) for a 12 month period. To know how to defer PPD, scroll down below.

How to submit
Personal and Professional Development (PPD) ?

You need to submit each year you need to record a minimum of three credits of PPD records (associate -10, fellow-20) and two formal learning hours. So, in other words, you need to record a minimum of 3 PPD’s.

After signing in on IFOA’s website. Go to PPD>Add a new record.

After this you will see PPD Objective with following options:

  • Effective Communications
  • Professionalism
  • Problem Solving and Decision Making
  • Formal Learning Activity

Select the option that you think you have done in recent times. Suppose you select ‘Problem solving and decision making’.

Then you will see a new tab as “PPD Competency” in which many options will be available, select the most relevant one.

Then “Activity Description” will be there. In this you need to write about the activity you are working. You are not required to provide a detailed account of the task, only a broad description which should be under 250 characters.

Then select the Date of PPD activity. If the activity is more than a day than just mention any day in between.

Then comes the main thing “Learning outcome” in this you need to explain in detail what you have learned from this activity. It should be around 100-200 words. IFOA is looking for what you have learnt from that activity and how it will help you in the future.

Just try to answer,

  1. What have you learned? How it will help you in future?
  2. How this activity has helped in your personal development?
  3. What was the overall result/feedback?
  4. What were the key factors of success for the activity, what are things that you did differently?
  5. Any training or development requirements you have taken because of this activity?

In the end you will see an option for supervisor, IFOA recommends that before submitting your PPD you should discuss with someone senior to you (not necessarily an actuary) so that your record is correct, though it’s not mandatory.

That’s it HIT the submit button.

 Here is an example to explain PPD better:

The IFoA has also published some mini ‘guides’ that also contain best practice examples. They can be found alongside a video introduction here

PPD Requirements for non-working members

If you are a student member and currently not doing any job, then you can defer PPD. But it can defer only once. Student member can submit PPD based on learnings on seminar/meet-ups/actuarial videos by IFOA.

To defer it, just mail – [email protected] telling them that you are a full-time student/non-working member.

A sample mail:

Subject – Deferring PPD requirements

Respected Sir/Ma’am

I am __, ARN – __. I am a student member of IFOA and studying full time under the reduced rate system. I am currently not working so won’t be able to submit my PPD this diet.

Kindly update my PPD as soon as possible

Thanks & Regards
___

Note – IFOA might ask for any proof that whether you are a student or not, in that case just revert them a mail asking exactly what document is required and stating them that you are willing to provide whatever is required.

Since in the mail you have clearly mentioned that you are a student, so most probably it won’t be required. If they ask you just arrange the whatever document is required.

Hope this article will help you solve your doubts regarding PPD. If you have any other doubt, feel free to contact me on my LinkedIn.

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About the Author

Arpit Surana

Writer | Actuarial Aspirant | Member of The Actuarial Club & Insurolgy | An enthusiastic and passionate person pursuing actuarial science who always looks forward to learning and developing new skills.