Dan Atkinson, senior technical consultant at EQ Investors, began his career in financial planning as an administrator. This month he was named IFP Paraplanner of the Year, Rob Kingsbury writes.
Considering he has just four years of paraplanning under his belt, Dan Atkinson says he “never expected in my wildest dreams” to scoop this year’s IFP Paraplanner of the Year award. This was particularly so in a year in which, the judges said, “the number and standard of entries was hugely impressive and strongly reaffirm[ed] the considerable talent, knowledge and skill that exists amongst the growing paraplanner community”.
Recently promoted to senior technical consultant at Chartered financial advice firm EQ Investors, Dan spent his first three years at the firm as an administrator before moving into a paraplanning role. He holds the Diploma in Regulated Financial Planning from the PFS and is currently working towards Chartered Financial Planner status – he took the JF5 and AF3 exams in mid October.
The IFP awards process tests a paraplanner’s core knowledge and skills and consists of three elements. Dan describes the process from an entrant’s perspective. “The first element is an online technical assessment, multiple choice technical questions on various different areas of financial planning. That was quite fun and appealed to my technical side,” he says. “In the second stage, which focuses more on risk, you have to write a short essay. We were given a choice on two different subjects and I chose to write an essay on whether the FCA should regulate paraplanners. Alongside that we had to have an appraisal from one of the advisers that we work with. Then, if you get through those three stages, you are invited for interview and a general grilling about paraplanning.”
It was not an easy process, he says, and required him to invest a considerable amount of time outside of his normal working day. “The interview particularly was a very interesting experience. They asked some really tricky, in-depth questions about my views on financial planning and paraplanning. The questions really made you scratch your head and consider what you really do think about the issues, which was challenging but also a really good experience to go through.”
Given the amount of time and effort involved, how would he advise people who aren’t sure whether to enter paraplanning awards?
“I would say just go for it. I didn’t in my wildest dreams expect to win but I thought that the experience of doing it would be really useful because it would challenge me as a paraplanner outside of my day-to-day work. I’d say that you wouldn’t lose anything by attempting it. What I enjoyed most about it was getting the feedback from people I work with, because you don’t always get that in the normal working environment and actually that was probably almost as special as the award.”
Dan’s view on whether paraplanners should be regulated by the FCA, he says, very simply, is no – or certainly not directly. “My logic is that the role of the regulator is to protect the client. The client’s relationship is primarily with the financial planner and the financial planner is the one that is ultimately responsible for that relationship and so should be the person within the firm that is regulated.
“However, all the parts of the business that somehow touch the client, including administration, compliance, paraplanning, can have an impact on risk for the client. So, I think you need some kind of register or official standard to make sure that the people doing the work are decent individuals, honest, upright and know what they are doing.
“Having a register wouldn’t add value to the client and it’s not what the client is paying for, so my view is that the FCA isn’t the right body to get involved because it would just add cost to the wrong part of the equation. My wife is a nurse and you don’t expect the patient to pay for nurses to be registered but if a nurse does something damaging to a patient it’s a matter of public record.
“The people who would benefit from having some kind of defined standard or a register around paraplanning would be the financial planners, that is the people who are responsible to the regulator, as they would know that the people they are employing are fit under the standard.”
