FDA and Other PGAs Working on CBP Broker Continuing Education Programming: Panel

The FDA currently conducts broker outreach and holds meetings with brokers, some of which may have an educational component to them. “So, what we’re going to do now is we’re going to try and figure out the CEUs, the continuing education units -- if there’s an educational component” to these meetings, said Cindy Ford, an FDA consumer safety officer. Since there are five divisions within the import area and the FDA, the divisions might potentially offer different training, she said.

“What we're going to do now is to create standardized presentations for all of our five divisions in the import world, so that when you guys get to training, it'll be consistent. We're all about data quality. The data that you guys provide to us is how we can do our work. So that is the bottom line: we want good data quality," Ford said. She added that the FDA would be interested in learning what topics the agency should cover as part of these webinars and presentations.

Beyond educational offerings from the federal government, activities that could potentially fulfill the credits include webinars and coursework offered by private companies, port tours, industry conferences and internal company training, panelists said.

As brokers sign up for training, educational providers and others will be working with the five accreditors designated by CBP to get their coursework approved so that brokers may take that coursework for credit (see 2406270047).

“We’re the ones that are actually going to do the certification of the activities,” said Lenny Feldman, a managing partner with Sandler Travis. The law firm is one of the five accreditors designated by CBP to review educational coursework and continuing education opportunities, as well as provide quality control for the private activities. The five accreditors will be responsible for publishing a list of all the educators and activities on their websites, Feldman said.

Educational providers seeking to receive a stamp of approval from an accreditor will likely need a short description and objective of the offering. The description will need to show that the offering promotes an understanding of the import or export laws and regulations enforced by CBP and PGAs, according to Feldman. The accreditors are required to review the proposed offering within four days, and the educational provider will have 10 days to respond to any questions the accreditors might have.

CBP will review the accreditors’ approvals and disapprovals, which may discourage the educational provider from shopping around for accreditation. Furthermore, the accreditors that also provide educational offerings will have those offerings reviewed by another accreditor; they cannot approve their own offerings, panelists said.

“We have an SOP that we all follow that should keep it from happening,” said Kiko Zuniga, National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America senior counselor and moderator of the panel.

Accreditors are also responsible for calculating how much credit the educational offering is worth, according to Cynthia Whittenburg, executive vice president for the NCBFAA National Education Institute. If the webinar or offering is more than 50 minutes, it will serve as one credit, but if it’s 40 or 45 minutes, it will be a half credit, Whittenburg said. Educational offerings also may not be described as “meetings,” although a meeting may have an educational component that’s labeled as something else for accreditation purposes.

To accommodate and account for the continuing education requirements, the NCBFAA NEI has lowered the number of required hours from 20 hours per year to 15 hours per year, according to Whittenburg. This change affects customs specialists, certified export specialists and master export specialists that must meet NEI-related requirements.

Educational offerings by the federal government may be free, while private firms have a cap of $100 for their offerings, per the regulation.

The accreditors who have been meeting to discuss the implementation process have never discussed what fees they would name for their courses, panelists said.

“You don’t talk to other brokers and standardize your fees. It's the same,” Whittenburg said. “We’re not talking to each other and deciding what we're going to charge.”

When CBP will release the final notice defining the continuing education requirements for the 2024-2027 period is still uncertain, although Acting CBP Commissioner Troy Miller said during a WESCCON keynote speech that brokers could start earning credits in January 2025 after CBP publishes the Federal Register notice defining the details of the educational requirement.

CBP will notify customs brokers and other interested parties that the Federal Register notice has been published via the cargo systems messaging service, and it will be published on CBP.gov and relayed to associations serving the trade, according to Shari McCann, director of commercial operations, revenue and entry for CBP's Office of Trade. The announcement also will go out via email to all 13,000 individually licensed brokers, she said.

The new regulation, announced in June 2023 (see 2306220036) calls for customs brokers to undergo 36 hours of continuing education within a three-year cycle to maintain their customs broker licenses. However, since the regulation will start in the middle of the triennial cycle, customs brokers will earn less than 36 hours for this 2024-2027 period.