France: securing personal training account scheme

Growth of the system and commercial drift

The linked service ‘My Personal Training Account’, launched in November 2019, was successfully implemented: until December 2022 about 3.9 million users had received funds for selecting a training course in the field of their choice, with a total of 5.62 million training actions offered at the total cost of EUR 7.61 billion.

However, the model combining this subsidy for learners with the training offered by providers has also attracted unscrupulous economic operators. Besides fraud (identity theft), the phenomenon of commercial prospecting has taken on massive proportions: via telephone calls, SMS, emails or via social networks with ‘influencers’ acting as business introducers, sometimes also with the offer of gifts (telephone, tablet) in return for taking up a training course.

Prohibition of individual commercial prospecting

A law passed in December 2022 now prohibits any commercial canvassing for training funded via the CPF with the aim of collecting personal data or having an individual take up a training action. The authorities responsible for consumption and the prevention of fraud will be mandated to observe the violations of this prohibition.

Strengthening of supply control

Monitoring the training offer catalogue is another major challenge, considering that in December 2022, nearly 17 000 training providers offered around 200 000 training programmes on the ‘My Personal Training Account’ platform.  

Various safeguards were added in 2022 to ensure stricter regulation of the offers:

• training providers must be accredited with a national quality certification (‘Qualiopi’). The administrative proof required to register them on the ‘My Personal Training Account’ platform was reinforced;
• a check of the actual registration of vocational qualifications related to the training actions proposed for qualifications corresponding to skills complementary to a profession (i.e. transversal skills, certificates, legal permissions, all of which are registered in a register called ‘Specific Directory’), resulted in the de-referencing of 70% of the corresponding offers on the platform;
• specific controls on non-certifying actions eligible for the CPF (e.g. support for business creation) were carried out to ensure that they comply with the legal and regulatory framework;
• a new registration procedure for any new training organisation wishing to be registered on the platform was set up, so that the public body managing the scheme (the ‘Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations’) can carry out a prior check on the information and documentation of these organisations before their first publication of training offers;
• enhanced security for logging onto the platform was implemented for CPF holders. This measure, along with a more secure identification method (combining the use of an identifier and a mobile application), makes it possible to combat identity theft.

These regulatory measures adopted also made it possible to stabilise the level of related expenditure, which had risen sharply in 2021 due to the success of the Personal Training Account scheme. Discussions are underway regarding future adjustments to the system, to secure its long-term financial sustainability and to place greater responsibility on the learners while buying training actions.

Read more

• The key figures of My Training Account
• A law and several initiatives to preserve the CPF
• CPF: regulating and securing the training offer
• Personal training account: regulation activities and securing the service
• CPF: the offer of certifications in the Specific Directory reduced by 70%