ERIS Training

What "ERIS Training" Actually Means

Most professional designations separate "training" from "the exam." The Energy Risk and Insurance Specialist (ERIS) designation does not. Here, the training is the path to certification: you take a set of online core courses from the International Risk Management Institute (IRMI), delivered through the IRMI + WebCE Learning Center, and you pass a separate final assessment at the end of each one. There is no single high-stakes sitting that rolls everything together.

That design changes how you should prepare. Instead of building one giant study plan for a monolithic test, you are running a series of focused learning sprints, each tied to a specific slice of the energy insurance world: liability, contractual risk transfer, well control, renewables, upstream and midstream operations, and workers' compensation with maritime exposures. If you are still orienting yourself, our primer on what ERIS certification is covers the credential at a higher level, and this article focuses on the training itself.

How the ERIS Program Is Structured

The program is built around a catalog of six core courses. You select and complete any five of the six, and each course carries its own final assessment. The six courses on the current IRMI catalog are:

1. Commercial Liability Insurance for the Energy Industry
2. Contractual Risk Transfer in Energy
3. Control of Well/Operators Extra Expense Risks and Insurance
4. Renewable Energy: Unlocking Opportunity
5. Understanding the Oil and Gas Industry and Its Risks
6. Workers Comp and Maritime Liability for the Energy Industry

A point worth stating plainly: these six titles are course names, not weighted exam domains. There is no published percentage breakdown assigning relative weight to each, and the six-heading structure does not mean all six are mandatory or that a single exam samples evenly from them. If you want a deeper look at how the content areas relate to one another, see our complete guide to the ERIS content areas.

IRMI assumes you arrive with basic insurance terminology and fundamentals. Holding another degree or designation does not waive any of the selected core courses, so even a seasoned property-casualty professional still completes five full courses.

Choosing Your Five of Six Courses

Because you skip exactly one course, your first strategic decision is which one to leave out. There is no single right answer; the best choice depends on your background and your employer's book of business.

One consideration: skipping the course that matches your weakest area is tempting, but the program also exists to broaden you. If the goal is to credibly discuss energy risk across segments, choose to skip the course whose subject you will least encounter in your actual work rather than the one you simply find hardest.

Course-by-Course Training Breakdown

Only public curriculum and course descriptions are available for review here, so the points below reflect what the titles and public descriptions indicate rather than the contents of the paid course texts. Treat them as orientation, not a syllabus.

How the Course Finals Work

Each course ends with its own assessment, and the default conditions for certification-only credit are unusually forgiving compared with many professional exams:

• Format: 50 multiple-choice questions selected from a question bank.
• Passing threshold: 70% correct, applied to each course final separately.
• Open book: reference materials are allowed under the default conditions.
• No proctor or monitor: you are not required to sit under supervision.
• Retakes: unlimited under the default setup.

Because the finals are separate, there is no aggregate score across the five courses. Passing the Contractual Risk Transfer final at 70% does not offset a miss on another. If you want the numbers in more detail, our pieces on the ERIS passing score and the ERIS pass rate explain what is and is not published. And if you are weighing difficulty, our difficulty guide walks through why open-book finals still demand real familiarity with the material.

"Open book" is easy to misread as "easy." With 50 questions pulled from a bank, you cannot count on seeing the same set twice, and hunting through a course for every answer is slow and error-prone. The candidates who finish comfortably are the ones who have already internalized the concepts and use the materials only to confirm details.

Sequencing Your Training

Because the five courses are independent, the order is yours to choose. A sensible approach is to build from foundation to specialty, so later courses feel like extensions rather than new languages. Here is one illustrative sequence for a candidate taking the courses that include the industry overview, liability, contracts, well control, and workers comp and maritime. Adjust the weeks to your own pace; this is a planning aid, not an official schedule.

The logic is simple: the industry overview comes first because every other course leans on it, and the specialty well-control material comes after you have the operational context to make sense of it. If your five include Renewable Energy instead of one of these, slot it after the industry overview so the contrast with traditional operations is clear. For a broader preparation framework, see our ERIS study guide.

Training Costs, Access Windows and Deadlines

The financial and time mechanics are straightforward, but they interact in ways that are easy to overlook.

Two clocks run at once. Each individual course typically gives you about 12 months of access, while the overall program gives you five years from your first purchase to complete all five courses and their finals. These are separate periods, so plan so that you finish each course's final before that course's access lapses, while keeping an eye on the larger five-year window.

Buying all five at once at the bundled rate starts your five-year clock immediately, but it also commits you financially up front. Buying course by course lets you spread the cost, though it can total more than the bundled USD 845 depending on how you purchase. Either way, the clock starts from the first core course you buy.

Who Benefits Most From This Training

The training is aimed at people whose daily work touches energy risk and its insurance. That includes insurance professionals who place, underwrite, or service energy accounts, as well as risk managers inside energy companies who need to speak fluently with their brokers and carriers. Others in the orbit include claims specialists handling energy losses, contract and procurement staff negotiating risk-transfer provisions, and professionals pivoting into the sector as renewables expand the market.

Because IRMI assumes basic insurance fundamentals, absolute newcomers to insurance will want to build that base first. If you are weighing the investment, our analyses on whether the certification is worth it, earnings, and ERIS-related jobs lay out the career side, and the requirements guide clarifies eligibility. When you are ready to test your recall under realistic conditions, the ERIS practice test platform is built for that.

Ongoing Training: Annual Renewal Hours

Earning the designation is not the end of the training. Validity is renewed annually on your certification anniversary by completing six approved continuing-education hours within each 12-month period. You can earn those hours in three ways:

• An online renewal course from the IRMI renewal catalog
• Eligible sessions at an IRMI conference
• An approved educational event

The critical rule is that renewal credit cannot be carried into a future year. If you complete ten hours in one period, only six count toward that year; the extra four do not roll forward to the next. Build renewal into your annual calendar rather than treating it as an afterthought, and verify that any event or course you choose is approved before you invest time in it. For the full picture of how the designation fits together, see our overview of ERIS certification.

Frequently Asked Questions