We are indebted to the Australian & New Zealand Institute of Insurance and Finance for the state of the nation picture of financial services training and professional development in these turbulent times of mid-2009.

Although there are calls at the end of this week for more and improved training for financial planners and advisers, the Institute or ANZIIF, as it is variously known, is conducting highly successful training for up to 15,000 people in Australia, New Zealand and in south and east Asia, including China, in financial services – mainly in insurance.

Its curricula include faculties for training of financial planners, although its concentration is on the general and life insurance industries.

The Institute is not the only organisation that conducts education for the financial services sector. Universities and tertiary colleges are increasing their work in these areas.

The National Insurance Brokers Association makes education through its own Academy one of its three pillars.

But the Institute has put the tenet of all this industry professional development together in the latest issue of its Journal under the title “The value of human capital”.

The issue has a large feature compiled by editor Sally Matheson quoting some of the foremost human resource experts in Australia and New Zealand to comment.

Joan Fitzpatrick, CEO of ANZIIF, the driving force of lifting education to major status in insurance, especially, has taken this professional training well beyond Australia’s shores.

This Irish-born lawyer foresaw this need to be extended when she took command of the Institute in Melbourne just over a decade ago.

She was working in Asia before coming to Australia and still travels widely pushing the word of the Institute.

So in seeing much of our Asia-Pacific region, she is qualified to observe: “There is much about our world that is unprecedented in our lifetimes, so it’s hard to predict the future and assess the efficacy of various responses.”

But Ms Fitzpatrick is in no doubt about insurance (particularly general insurance): “The industry is better placed and in many areas better built in terms of skill an expertise for coping with this type of reality than any other sector of business in our communities.”

And to emphasise the importance of human capital to insurance throughout the world, a KPMG Global-Economist Intelligence Unit survey has just reported the top 3 areas for investment in global insurance plans led with training, 38 per cent from respondents.

Following this were investment in processes and policies, 37 per cent, and information technology systems, 36 per cent. Insurance – at least in Australia – appears still to be a security the nation has to have.