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October 30, 2011

Certified Structured Settlement Consultant: Continuing Education Now Required

The CSSC after your structured settlement consultant's name stands for Certified Structured Settlement Consultant. The professional certification is awarded by the National Structured Settlements Trade Association. The CSSC has been awarded since 1994.

At the time of posting, structured settlement consultants who have earned the CSSC designation have completed required reading, 4 days of classwork hosted at the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business Executive Education program and have passed a comprehensive examination.

in 2008, through the efforts of the Society of Settlement Planners and the Texas Tech faculty, another industry professional designation was created called the Registered Settlement Planner (RSP). To achieve the RSP the candidate has to pass two graduate level courses as well as write a settlement plan that is vetted by a peer review board. In addition, the RSP has continuing education requirements and RSP designees must agree to adhere to a code of ethics.

Some have argued that the RSP is superior to the CSSC, but as a holder of both the CSSC (since 1995) and the RSP (since 2009) I can attest to how valuable each course is to your settlement consultant's professional development.

Thus I was happy to learn that after 17 years, hundreds of certificants and years of discussions on changes to the CSSC, the changes have FINALLY happened!  CSSC designees will now be required to complete annual CE credits, as well as CLE credits and internal on line courses, which NSSTA is preparing (for its designation), to obtain the necessary credits. It is also my understanding that the curriculum is updated to include related settlement planning topics.

The structured settlement watchdog applauds the efforts of the NSSTA and the members of its CSSC committee to upgrade the program. In a dynamic field, that is a subset of multiple dynamic fields, continuing education is an important part of a structured settlement consultant staying on top of his or her game, Mandatory CE is essential to the credibility of any professional certification program

Now if the few stragglers who continue to make the material misrepresentation that they earned the CSSC certification through the University of Notre Dame  (or its Zouk Mosbeh Lebanon "equivalent", Notre Dame University) could elevate their collective professional integrity to make a simple change to their websites and/or LinkedIn profiles, all would be as it should be. In 2009, at the urging of the structured settlement watchdog, the NSSTA, for the first time, published guidelines on how the CSSC may be used.

 

Posted at 10:44 AM in Certified Structured Settlement Consultant (CSSC) NSSTA, National Structured Settlement Trade Association, NSSTA |

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