Crelan Group introduces a learning platform to manage learning and facilitate compliance with Totara Learn

Crelan Group is a cooperative financial group and holds the fifth place within the ranking of Belgian retail banks. AXA Bank Belgium joined the financial group towards the end of 2021. Crelan Group now has more than 800 bank branches across Belgium and counts over 2800 agency employees.

The Challenge

AXA Bank Belgium became part of Crelan Group at the end of 2021. In terms of learning and development, this not only resulted in a doubling of the number of agency employees to be trained, but also the introduction of new tools and new learning materials. Both entities worked with different learning management systems. Consequently, the current way of managing learning had to be reevaluated in order to establish a new process that would be efficient and effective, and that would leverage the best of both entities.

Since Crelan Group is part of the highly-regulated banking sector, its agents are subject to the regulations of the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA). This autonomous public institution – focussed on safeguarding the integrity of the financial markets and the treatment of financial customers – imposes a number of continued education requirements on professionals that are active in the sector, such as the number of learning hours they should obtain within a given period of time.

Therefore, it was important for Crelan Group to have a digital tool that would not only allow them to manage and organise training for their employees, but also track their agents’ learning and the associated FSMA points they obtained, in order to ensure compliance. This led them to Totara.

The Solution

Totara was introduced to Crelan Group after the merger with AXA Bank. The latter had been using Totara Learn for over 10 years and was very happy with it, as well as with the services provided by their Totara partner Deloitte. As Crelan Group deliberated which learning management system to adopt within the expanded organization, they decided that Totara would be a better fit compared to the LMS they had been using. Moreover, the AXA Bank platform already contained custom-built features that allowed for an easy follow-up of FSMA requirements. Crelan Group decided to continue AXA Bank’s long-standing partnership with Deloitte to create an upgraded platform, that would fulfil the learning needs of both entities.

To get the most out of their LMS, the AXA Bank platform was upgraded from Totara version 12 to version 16. This expanded the available functionalities and ensured Crelan Group remained up-to-date with the fast-paced technological landscape.

The current platform now houses two separate catalogues, one for Crelan and one for AXA Bank. Users only see the catalogue of the entity they belong to. Admins, however, can easily navigate between catalogues by clicking on the Crelan or AXA Bank tab. This provides a clear structure for admins and allows them to leverage the power of one platform to provide both separate and cross-entity learning to Crelan and AXA Bank employees.

To maximize user-friendliness, the catalogue also contains extensive filter options. When users open the catalogue, they arrive at a landing page that provides them with an overview of the different topics that are included in the catalogue, as well as with the possibility to pre-filter their results on these topics. They can further refine their search based on learning format, language, location and more. Most importantly, they can consult all FSMA information for each course in the course tiles and filter on FSMA points, which facilitates compliance as they can easily see which courses pertain to their specialty and how many hours they will be accredited.

Every course for which FSMA points can be obtained contains a certificate. These certificates have a different layout and different signatures depending on the entity the user belongs to. In addition, users can track their completed FSMA training and certificates on their My FSMA Points page. They can even upload completed FSMA certificates for training taken outside of the LMS.

On organisation level, all learning and compliance data is tracked and visualised via extensive reporting. This is done via Totara’s native report builder and an integration with Power BI.

Results 

Thanks to the clear reporting on obtained FSMA points and certificates on the My FSMA Points page as well as the extensive filtering and info available in the catalogue, Crelan Group’s employees have been using the LMS since January 2023 as a one-stop-shop to ensure they stay compliant with FSMA regulations on continued education. In addition, the reporting capabilities of the platform allow Crelan Group to track learning and development data.

The platform’s clear structure and design have supported Crelan employees – for whom Totara was an entirely new tool –  in their discovery of the platform, facilitating a smooth transition. In turn, AXA Bank employees have also enjoyed the new look and feel of their trusted LMS.

Thanks to Totara’s flexibility, Crelan Group was able to offer one tool for learning management that met the needs of both entities after the merger and that allowed them to organize and report on both entity-specific and cross-entity training.

Impressed by the many possibilities Totara offers, Crelan Group is looking forward to explore more of the functionalities available, such as automatic feedback forms, learning plans, and programmes. They will continue this exploration together with Totara Platinum Partner Deloitte.