Dearborn Career Tracker Helps Financial Services Companies Comply With NASD, SEC, and State Regulations, Cut Costs, and Save Time

Customized, Online System for Managing Mandated Curriculum, Compliance, and Administration

CHICAGO, IL, May 10, 2001 -- The current economic climate is forcing financial services firms to find ways to cut costs, and training departments are often the first place firms look to reduce expenses. Yet, education and training must continue in order for firms to comply with SEC, NASD, and state-mandated regulations to avoid fines and penalties. Managing the training process and reporting compliance to the regulatory agencies is often a time-consuming and expensive challenge. Dearborn Financial Services, a Kaplan Professional Company, offers a creative solution -- the Dearborn Career Tracker (DCT). DCT is a total Web-delivered compliance management system that training and compliance professionals can use to design firm specific curricula and manage, enforce, and proactively track the results of their internal training and compliance programs.

DCT's centrally managed and accessible website allows organizations to consolidate individual demographic, licensing, and training information in one place, and proactively measure and manage state and firm mandated requirements. DCT helps firms mitigate the risk of losing a license, getting hit with penalties for non-compliance, or the costs associated with last minute scrambling by agents to identify and address unfulfilled training requirements

"DCT is a powerful tool for anyone who needs to monitor staff compliance with education and licensing. Its sophisticated course and curriculum options can be customized, and reports of completion status can be sent to individuals and managers," said Don DeMark, Dearborn's General Manager. "In addition, course completion credits cascade throughout the system fulfilling as many requirements as possible with each course. DCT helps representatives maximize their selling time by minimizing their training time."

DCT has three primary functions:

Curriculum Management
Organizations can use DCT's unmatched power and flexibility to design the curriculum that best meets the needs of their varied constituents, as well as firm and state mandated regulatory requirements. Individuals can be enrolled into any number of curricula comprised of Dearborn courses, client courses, and third-party courses.

Compliance Management
Tracking multiple insurance licenses across lines and varying state requirements is a daunting task. DCT streamlines this process by automatically comparing course completion to a comprehensive database of state rules and regulations. DCT's rules database captures the total, line, and special requirements state-by-state and contains the intelligence to track reciprocity agreements and apply any exemptions (experience, length of license, designation, education, etc.) allowed by the regulators. Because DCT is a Web-centric service, the database can be updated by the Dearborn Compliance Department as the states modify their regulations, helping to reduce the gaps in compliance due to outdated rules and regulations.

Administration:
Company administrators can use DCT's rich set of tools that overlay both the Curriculum and Compliance Management features of DCT, including the ability to maintain individual records, redefine individual memberships throughout the system, and add new licensing data quickly and efficiently via DCT's intuitive Web interface. Based on the security profile of an administrator, only those records at locations the administrator is allowed to modify may be accessed. Because the system is Web-based, individuals, administrators, and managers can access the information they need to do their jobs without a costly investment in technology.

Another significant administrative feature is DCT's extensive set of individual and organizational reports that enable training and compliance professionals to monitor the status and progress of each student, allowing the company to anticipate problems before it's too late. DCT offers 12 standard reports and the ability to generate custom reports that can be tailored to firm specific organizational structure and reporting locations.

Dearborn (www.dearborn.com) is a leading provider of prelicensing and continuing education training and certification for securities, insurance and financial services professionals, and offers online courses, interactive CD-ROMs, and print materials, as well as classroom instruction in more than 120 locations in the U.S. and abroad. Dearborn also supplies education courseware to independent schools, colleges, and corporations. Kaplan Professional (www.kaplanprofessional.com) is a unit of Kaplan, Inc. that provides licensing and continuing education training, certification, and professional development courses for securities, insurance, financial services, legal, IT, and real estate professionals and corporations. Kaplan, Inc., is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO).

Press Contact: pubrel@kaplan.com, (212) 492-5965

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