Passing the RE got you in. CPD keeps you there. Under FAIS, KIs and representatives must complete verifiable Continuing Professional Development hours every cycle, through activities accredited by bodies like the FPI or SAIFM. Skip it and you are no longer fit and proper — quietly, until someone checks.
A standing obligation to keep competence current — evidenced, recurring, and part of staying licensed.
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is the FAIS requirement that KIs and representatives keep their competence current after they are approved. It is part of fit and proper under Board Notice 194 of 2017 — not an optional professional nicety. Competence is treated as something that decays and must be topped up, cycle after cycle.
The obligation is to complete verifiable CPD hours within each cycle by doing accredited activities, and to keep records that prove it. “Verifiable” is the operative word: attendance and outcomes have to be evidenced, not self-asserted.
Eighteen verifiable hours, a fixed June–May cycle, through FPI- or SAIFM-accredited activity.
The FAIS CPD cycle runs 1 June to 31 May. Hours are counted within that window and reset each cycle — there is no rolling carry-over to lean on.
For the main FSP categories (I, II, IIA, III, IV), the requirement is 18 verifiable CPD hours per cycle. Some professional bodies layer additional ethics / standards hours on top for their members.
Activities must be CPD-accredited. The FSCA relies on SAQA-approved professional bodies — notably the FPI and SAIFM — to accredit providers and activities.
Verifiable CPD has a measurable outcome and evidence (assessment, certificate, attendance record). Casual reading on its own does not count toward the requirement.
CPD that counts is verifiable, relevant to the financial services you render, and accredited. That typically means structured courses, accredited webinars (live or recorded), assessed e-learning and recognised events — each carrying an allocated hour value and producing a record you can show on request.
What does not count: unstructured reading, generic management training with no link to your financial services, or anything without an accreditation and an evidence trail. The FSCA’s interest is competence in the services you are actually authorised for — CPD has to map to your licence categories, not just fill a number.
Programmes like the Masthead KI programme are built so their components carry FPI or SAIFM CPD accreditation — one reason structured providers are popular: the hours are pre-counted and pre-evidenced.
The failure mode is predictable: people leave CPD to May, then discover the accredited hours they needed are short or the evidence is missing. By then the cycle is closing. Treat CPD as a tracked, ongoing control — log hours as you earn them, keep the certificates, reconcile quarterly.
For a KI, this is doubled: you carry your own hours and oversee that your representatives meet theirs. A rep who falls short on verifiable CPD is a rep who is no longer fully fit and proper — and that lands on the KI’s oversight, not just the rep.
The cost of getting it wrong is not a fine in the post — it is a competence lapse that surfaces in a review, an audit or a complaint, at the worst possible moment. Cheap insurance: a register, accredited providers, and a quarterly check.
Hours reset on 1 June. A burst of CPD in April does not bank for next year — each cycle stands alone.
Hours from non-accredited activity do not count, however useful the content. Confirm FPI / SAIFM accreditation up front.
No certificate, no verifiable hour. Keep the records as you go; reconstructing them in May is misery.