Training Classes Filling Up With Sales Reps from Banks

Brokers of investment products at banks are crowding training classes across the country as their bosses seek to add legitimacy to their marketing operations.

Over the past six months, officials with several of the nation's leading training companies have seen a surge of bank sales representatives in their classrooms. In some cases, the bankers are outnumbering students from traditional nonbank securities firms.

Some of that boost can be attributed to a securities industry-led mandate requiring that both bank and nonbank brokers receive additional education in the products they market as well as on regulatory issues.

This continuing education requirement is necessary for brokers to keep their licenses to sell products.

Nevertheless, it is bankers who have signed up for the training at a far greater rate than traditional brokers.

Anita Volkomer, a senior vice president of Los-Angeles based Financial Services Training Inc., said she believes banks are responding to a perception that their brokers aren't as knowledgeable as they need to be.

"With everyone complaining about banks, they have created this atmosphere - whether it's right or not - that banks aren't doing the job," Ms. Volkomer said. "If you say it loud enough and often enough, everyone starts paying attention."

Right now, Ms. Volkomer's firm is working with a technology vendor to develop computer-based training materials, an approach she said is best suited for banks with large numbers of people in need of training.

Paul Weisman, president of Securities Training Corp., New York, added that the number of bank employees attending classes to become licensed brokers has doubled.

Mr. Weisman said involvement of banks on both the retail and wholesale side of the securities business is the source for the new crop of students in his firm's seminars.

"The bankers need the licenses unless they have absolutely no contact with the public," he said.

Mr. Weisman said his firm also sets up continuing education training programs for New York banks as well as an increasing number of foreign banks based in New York. "ING Bank, ABN-Amro, and Barclays Bank have built their operations from the ground up and have come to us for the training," Weisman said.

With less than two months to go before the new continuing-education requirements take place, many banks are scrambling to institute some kind of internal training courses to comply with the requirements.

Companies are required to have plans for continuing education in place by July 1 and functioning by Jan. 1, 1996. The requirements came from the Securities Industry/Regulatory Council after a 1993 task force of representatives from the National Association of Securities Dealers, the New York Stock Exchange, and the North American Securities Administrators Association recommended continuing-education requirements for the securities industry.

The NASD and the New York stock exchange will monitor the training programs after the Jan. 1 deadline. The programs must test sales representatives knowledge and understanding of NASD and NYSE rules and compliance with those rules.

Mr. Jedlicka is editor of Bank Mutual Fund Report, an American Banker newsletter, from which this article is excerpted.

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