More Scope for a Growing Market

by Sarah Murray - Financial Times

June 25, 2002.

"Financial institutions spend a larger percentage of their training budget in this field than companies in other sectors. As corporate governance and compliance issues move into the spotlight in the financial and services industry, keeping employees up to date with regulatory developments is essential...

But e-learning - and, more broadly, computer-based training - is being used by companies for training needs that go beyond regulatory and compliance issues into areas such as sales training, management training and even leadership courses.

Assisting the broadening of e-learning's scope is the evolving nature of its programmes and technologies. The days are over when companies simply took an offline textbook and pasted it on to the web. 'Learning objects' - short bite-sized pieces of training perhaps no longer than five minutes - are being embraced by many organisations.

"It is about repackaging information for different people and making it more digestible and relevant to what they are doing," says Lars Hyland, Key Accounts Director at Epic Group, the UK e-learning provider.

One growing area for the financial services sector is in customer training - and here, e-learning has a role to play. Products such as mortgages and life insurance policies are complex and often difficult to understand. Many companies are starting to realise that, if they can explain these products more clearly to their clients, it will encourage them to buy those products and will build customer loyalty.

"Explaining these things to people can only be a good thing from a brand positioning point of view," says Mr Hyland. "You are seen as the consumer champion and they will understand your product.""