As many of you know I have been part of the Working Group working with the Financial Services Skills Council (FSSC) to develop the National Occupational Standards (NOS) for the role of a Paraplanner.
These are now virtually complete and I would like to personally thank everyone who has been involved in whatever way shape or form and provided feedback for this project. All of your comments have been really useful and helpful.
This is very important for me as it is the start of the role of Paraplanner becoming more understood and an accepted within the Financial Services industry as a whole. I still find that I attend events generally and even events within Financial Services, where people don’t know what a paraplanner is, don’t know what a paraplanner does and don’t know where a paraplanner fits into the financial advice process.
Having the NOS for the role and being able to direct individuals to the FSSC in order to get more information is a great step forward.
It’s also great that in the future people new to the industry will be able to choose paraplanning as a career path rather than having to accept either being an administrator or becoming an Adviser/Planner.
My understanding is that the completed NOS will be available on the FSSC website very shortly.
The next stage of the process is for the FSSC to determine whether or not the Financial Services industry feels there is a need for a specific paraplanner qualification.
They have asked me to speak to a number of different types of employers; large organisations and small companies; companies in different geographies particularly Scotland as well as people who may have used paraplanners for some time and companies who may not have used paraplanners before; and to understand from these companies and employers whether they feel a specific paraplanning qualification would be useful, what level this should be at and how any examination or assessment should be carried out.
If this is something you would like to be involved in please email me so that we can discuss this further.
The FSSC have also contacted a number of individuals to ask for their feedback via a questionnaire.
If you have been one of the people to receive a questionnaire, please fill it in a return it, it should only take about 5 minutes. Similarly if you have not received a questionnaire and would like to provide feedback to the FSSC that would be fantastic. The more comments and feedback we get the better any qualification (should the industry feel this is appropriate) will be.
If you would like to be involved (and I would welcome as many of you as possible) please send me an email and I will forward the questionnaire on to you. The responses have to be back to the FSSC by 30th April 2009.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
If you could send me a questionnaire, I’ll complete and return it. I work as a corporate paraplanner in Edinburgh. My role is much as you’d imagine but the main focus is on corporate client relationships as well as researching, preparing advice reports, annual stewardship reports and member communications for our Edinburgh based corporate IFAs.
Up to the end of December 2008, my role extended to individual paraplanning with much of the focus on HNW and pension planning, including Pension Transfers, USPs etc etc.
I’d be interested in the consensus feedback you get about a specific exam, although I’m not convinced of the need for one myself. I’m currently working my way through the CII’s JO exams and I think these are more than sufficient for most situations.
I’ve been watching The Paraplanner site develop and been meaning to register for a while. I look forward to hearing from you.
Steve,
Can you email martin at theparaplanner dot come with your email address and he will send it to you.
Steve and everyone else who has asked for a questionnaire. Many thanks for your responses its great to see that so many people are interested in this.
Just to offer a little bit of clarification. The FSSC have produced the National Occupational Standards for paraplanning which set out what the industry believes are the key functionsof a paraplanner and the skills required for a person to undertake those functions. Some of those functions are ‘assess clients goals, needs and objectives’ and ‘research appropriate products’ and ‘prepare suitable and compliant reports’. Most of the CII exams I have taken have been of a technical nature ‘ what are the duties of trustees’ or ‘complete an income tax calculation’ and the question we are asking here is ‘Does the industry want a qualification based on the NOS for paraplanning?’ If so what should it look like.
Steve, I completely take your point about the CII’s JO exams. Completion of all of these will provide you with a wealth of technical knowledge but do they assess your capabilities as a paraplanner?
I don’t have the right or wrong answer, – in fact there probably isnt one – thats why we need as many people as possible to send their responses.
Make sure you all let the FSSC know.
The questionnaire can now be downloaded from the FSSC website, link below
http://www.fssc.org.uk/519_14.html?i=2
Is this still going ahead with FSSC now that their license renewal has been denied recently?