The Investment Company Accreditation is a mark of your knowledge and competence in investment companies. It is intended for finance professionals, predominantly financial advisers and planners, paraplanners and wealth managers.

Find out more about the Investment Company Accreditation.

You will need to successfully complete four interactive courses within Learning Zone, the AIC’s e-learning area. Each of the four courses takes up to 45 minutes to complete. Once you have entered Learning Zone, enrol yourself in the Investment Company Accreditation and then complete the courses in your own time.

No, you can complete them at your own convenience. There is no time limit for completing the four courses.

The four courses cover the following topics: an introduction to investment companies; discounts and premiums; gearing; and the income features of investment companies. Taken together, they give a good grounding in investment companies’ structural features, benefits and risks.

Yes. It’s best to leave your browser window open when you do this. If you close the window, you may be able to pick up where you left off, but this depends on where you are in the course and can’t be guaranteed. Once you have completed a course, feel free to close your browser window and leave Learning Zone until you are ready to take the next one.

If you have already completed some of the courses within the Accreditation, you won’t have to do them again. You only need to complete courses you haven’t done already. If you have already completed all four courses, you can request your Accreditation certificate by enrolling in the Accreditation within Learning Zone. Please allow up to two hours for your certificate to arrive by email.

You need to complete four courses to achieve the Investment Company Accreditation, but CPD certificates are awarded after completing each course. So you don’t have to complete all four courses to start building up CPD.

To qualify for a CPD certificate, you must complete the CPD Quiz at the end of each course. Please note that the knowledge checks at the end of each chapter of the course are just to help you recollect key points, and do not count towards your score in the CPD Quiz.

Your CPD certificate should be emailed to you on successfully completing a course. Emails can be blocked by spam filters, so you can also download your certificate within Learning Zone by clicking on the small trophy button within the relevant course (see what this looks like below). If you don’t see that trophy button but you have completed the course and passed the test, then don’t worry, we will send your certificate to you if you contact us by email.

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All of the four courses in Learning Zone are accredited by the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII) and the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI). They are designed as structured CPD.

In addition, the Investment Company Accreditation programme aligns with the Professional Map developed by the CII, supporting several competencies related to financial planning and paraplanning.

Once you have successfully completed all four courses that make up the Investment Company Accreditation, you will be emailed a separate certificate to verify that you have achieved the Accreditation. This is separate from the CPD certificates that you will receive after completing each course.

Please check the ‘My Accreditation’ page to make sure you have no courses left to do. If all four courses are done and you have not received an email with your certificate within two hours, please check your junk/spam folder. If you can’t find the email there, get in touch with us on 020 7282 5555 or by email.

There can be a brief lag between enrolling for the Accreditation and being assigned your courses. Please wait for 10 minutes then refresh the page.

Though we test the courses extensively, problems do sometimes occur. To minimise the risk of these, please access the course on a desktop, laptop or tablet, not a smartphone. Make sure your internet browser is updated to the latest version. Apple users have reported some problems using the Safari browser, so it’s best to run the course in another browser such as Chrome, Edge or Firefox