How to run CPD-compliant events for financial advisers
CPD events for financial advisers occupy a specific intersection of regulatory obligation, commercial relationship management and genuine professional development. Getting the compliance right matters — for the advisers who need evidence of structured learning and for the firms that need to demonstrate they are meeting their training and competence obligations.
What makes a CPD event compliant?
The FCA does not publish a prescriptive list of what constitutes valid CPD for financial advisers. Instead, the Senior Managers and Certification Regime (SM&CR) and the Training and Competence sourcebook (TC) establish that firms must maintain a structured, evidenced approach to ongoing professional development. In practice this means CPD events must have a defined learning objective, a measurable outcome, and a record that the individual attended and engaged.
For events to count towards structured CPD — as opposed to unstructured reading and self-directed activity — they typically need to be planned in advance with defined topics, have a verifiable attendance record, and ideally include some form of assessment or reflection that demonstrates learning has taken place. A post-event survey asking what attendees learned, combined with an attendance certificate, satisfies most professional body requirements.
The three components of a CPD-compliant event record
A compliant CPD event produces three things that an adviser or their compliance team can file: proof of registration, proof of attendance, and a certificate specifying the CPD hours claimed.
Proof of registration is produced automatically when an attendee completes an event registration form. The registration record should include the attendee's name, their firm, the event name, the date, and the GDPR consent they provided for their data to be processed.
Proof of attendance requires a check-in process on the day. This can be a paper sign-in sheet, but digital check-in via QR code scanning is faster, more accurate and produces a searchable timestamp record that is far more useful if the firm's competence records are ever reviewed.
A CPD certificate should specify the individual's name, the event name, the date, the CPD hours allocated to the event, and the name of the accrediting body if the event is formally accredited. Certificates should be issued promptly after the event — advisers who attend multiple events across a year will need to collate these for their annual CPD record.
How to allocate CPD hours correctly
CPD hours should reflect the actual contact time — the time an attendee spends in structured learning activity. Networking breaks, registration periods and lunch should not be included. If an event runs from 9:30am to 3:30pm with a 45-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks, the structured CPD time is four hours and thirty minutes.
For events where attendees can choose between concurrent sessions — parallel tracks or breakout workshops — the CPD hours should reflect the sessions each individual actually attended, not the total programme length. This requires session-level attendance tracking rather than whole-event attendance tracking.
Some professional bodies, including the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and the Personal Finance Society (PFS), require that CPD events be formally structured learning activities with defined learning outcomes. If your target audience includes members of these bodies, it is worth structuring your event to meet their requirements and stating the learning outcomes clearly on the event registration page.
What to include on a CPD event landing page
The event registration page is the first place advisers and their paraplanners look to assess whether an event qualifies for CPD. The page should clearly state the CPD hours, whether the event is structured or unstructured CPD, any professional body accreditation, and the specific learning objectives or topics that will be covered.
Vague descriptions — "a broad discussion of investment trends" — are unhelpful and may cause advisers to question whether the event qualifies. Specific statements — "this event covers the regulatory changes to the advice process following Consumer Duty, with a focus on the fair value assessment and client outcome monitoring requirements" — give advisers the information they need to assess relevance and record the event accurately.
Post-event requirements
Once the event is complete, CPD certificates should be dispatched within a few days. Advisers who attend multiple events across the year sometimes need to submit their CPD log to their employer or professional body by a specific deadline — delays in receiving certificates create unnecessary friction.
Retain the attendance record for at least three years, or for as long as your firm's data retention policy requires. If the firm is ever subject to a Training and Competence review, the ability to produce accurate, timestamped attendance records for specific events demonstrates a mature and controlled approach to CPD management.
How Okupio handles CPD compliance
Okupio manages the entire CPD event workflow in a single platform. Registration creates a timestamped consent record. Check-in via QR code produces a verified attendance record per attendee. The post-event survey triggers automatic CPD certificate generation and dispatch. The reporting dashboard gives the organiser a complete view of who attended, which sessions they joined, and which certificates have been issued.
For organisations running multiple CPD events across the year, Okupio maintains a persistent record of every event, every registration, and every certificate — which means the compliance record is always accurate and always accessible without needing to consolidate spreadsheets or chase agencies for data.