How The Professional Regulator built capability in the NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority

ANZSOG’s The Professional Regulator program was designed in consultation with members of our National Regulators Community of Practice (NRCoP), to address the lack of regulator-specific training and lift capability across regulatory organisations. 

Since the program began in 2023, it has been used by organisations who want to gain the benefits of giving their staff a deeper shared understanding of regulation and a common language to describe their work. 

The NSW State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) has put two cohorts of 20 staff each through TPR and have another just about to begin. SIRA Capability Manager Toni Leemen says that the program has been embraced by staff – and has given them a deeper understanding of the role’s regulators can play. 

“TPR really fit with two of our strategic goals. One was about building and supporting our talent, making sure that career development is a real thing within SIRA, and the other of strengthening our regulatory capability,” she said.  

“TPR’s broader focus on regulation, and that link to regulation being a profession that happens in a lot of different spheres and contexts, was something that was really appealing to us.” 

She said that staff were reporting that TPR had increased their regulatory knowledge, skills and confidence, and given them a more consistent approach in their own work. 

“It’s also helping people identify or focus on the regulatory outcome that’s being sought, as well as the tools they are using. It gives people a deeper context to apply in their own work.”  

TPR has been designed in partnership with the Australian National University’s (ANU) School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet). It is a self-paced course and includes six 90-minute online modules, as well as the opportunity to access six online small-group seminars which extend key learnings from the modules and to explore Australian-based case studies in-depth.  

Ms Leemen said the SIRA cohort included staff from a range of levels from director down to mid-tier level, and a broad spread across the organisation.  

“Being able to do the training across the board, means there’s more of that trickle-down effect. For any learning to work, there needs to be peer-to-peer learning to reinforce it. Humans, being social creatures, any time that you are actually bringing people together or giving people an opportunity to talk about what they’re learning, the learning’s stickier.”  

“Overall, the feedback has been really rewarding. People say that they now have a greater focus on ethics, that they’ve improved the structure of their regulatory responses, including their rationale for decisions, and that they’ve improved in their own use of, and confidence in, some of our regulatory tools.” 

Ms Leemen said that SIRA’s work was challenging and that it operated in a time of changing technology and community expectations. 

 “The technical complexity is really high. One of our consistent challenges is finding the balance between what are really specific legislative requirements and where there’s the possibility of process harmonisation or greater collaboration, or where we can scale and be very consistent across the schemes,” she said. 

“We sit in the portfolio of Customer Service within the New South Wales government, and we have a really strong focus on the people who use the schemes. We work with people at a very vulnerable point in their lives, so making sure we have the knowledge and skills to understand what that means and then persuade our regulated entities to really take that on, I think that’s quite a unique challenge.” 

Ms Leemen said that she personally had done the program and gained a deeper understanding of what regulatory skills are, and what skills and capabilities SIRA needs for the future. 

“I also feel more committed to what’s really interesting about regulation and the fact that there’s so many people who are really passionate about it. I think that getting a glimpse at the research and that body of knowledge that is there to draw on, was pretty motivating,” she said. 

“Hearing from other people about what they’ve achieved and how they’ve done it, in different regulatory contexts, was something that gave me an increased sense of feeling connected to the profession. 

“It’s helped me to understand the perpetual effort required to maintain transparency, public trust and confidence in what you’re doing.” 

Ms Leemen said she would recommend TPR to other organisations who wanted a unique program designed with regulators in mind. 

“I think that has enormous value just to give people a chance to sit back and think about their work. We don’t always give ourselves time for that. I’d say that it’s something our people have really valued. To me, that’s the real test,” she said. 

ANZSOG’s The Professional Regulator program provides professional development for regulators, regardless of regulatory sphere or jurisdiction, that results in a common foundation of current, modern regulatory practice, increasing the professionalism and capacity of regulators around Australia. The program has an open enrolment, so participants can enrol and start at any time. For more information on The Professional Regulator visit our website.

The course is a practical six module online self-paced professional learning program. Participants also have the unique opportunity to participate in a program of six seminars that expand on the topics and themes explored in the six online modules.