Paraplanner Insight

I have written several articles for New Model Adviser recently about the benefits of paraplanners and here is the first one.
As if any further evidence were needed, the events of the last few weeks will have highlighted to many Financial Planners and Advisers the benefits of having a qualified, experienced and technical individual, based in the office. To have someone who can keep up to date with what’s happening, deal with any incoming client calls and provide you with regular updates will have been invaluable.

I would guess that in the majority of cases, where there was someone who performed all these tasks, that person will have been a paraplanner.  I as a paraplanner, probably along with many of my paraplanner colleagues, have spent most of my time during the last few weeks with one eye constantly on the internet trying to keep up with events.

The reason for doing this is twofold.  Firstly to be able to answer any generic questions clients may have when they telephone the office and secondly to be able to share information with my Planner and indeed other colleagues.

Events have moved so quickly it’s been difficult for anyone to keep up to speed completely, particularly if they’ve been spending time with clients or working on a client case. For Planners and Advisers, to be able to come out of a client meeting knowing that there was someone in the office who could explain what’s happened during those few hours and the impact this could have on clients and at the same time know that there was somebody sufficiently knowledgeable and technically proficient enough to be able to speak to any clients who telephoned, is a great weight off their mind.  The last thing Planners need is being disturbed during a client meeting because there is no one else in the office who can take the call.

Of course this is not all paraplanners do.  The majority of their time is spent on research and report writing.

The research can be anything from researching a new product,  (some of the new ‘third way’ annuities for example) or looking at the performance of the underlying investments (whatever they may be) within a clients portfolio or simply obtaining some life assurance illustrations and then making sure that the differences between the different providers products was known and understood.

Similarly they could be writing reports for clients. This may be anything from a very short suitability letter to a very complicated Financial Plan including all the appropriate cash flow analysis.

But whatever the paraplanners’ tasks, if used correctly they will be able to take a great deal of the office based activities away from the Adviser/Planner to allow them to continue to do what they do best; talk to clients.

For this reason, it is vitally important for a paraplanner to be able to speak to other paraplanners and share best practice. This was the main reason behind setting up theparaplanner.com. The most active part of the site is the forum where paraplanners from all over the UK (and sometime from other countries) can talk to each other and share their ideas, solutions and experiences.

Half the battle with completing research is knowing where to look and if as a paraplanner you are asked to research a product or service you’ve never looked at before, where do you start? Well the ability to ask hundreds of other paraplanners for help is a fantastic resource.

I’ve never known a time like this during my 16 years in the industry and with all the uncertainty in the global financial markets (perceived or real) clients are concerned that they will lose all their money. For that reason many more clients have been contacting their Adviser/Planner, in many cases for nothing more than reassurance. But whilst you are speaking to these clients as indeed you should, the business has to continue and who better to assist you with this than a paraplanner.I hope you can see that having access to a technically minded, highly qualified and competent individual can add many benefits to your business not least of which is undertaking a number of office based tasks giving you more time to spend with your clients.