What I want is for the information on providers’ products, services, platforms, wrappers and charges to be on their website in a place where I can click a button and read the facts,” says John Redmond, senior paraplanner with BpH Wealth Management.
“As paraplanners we shouldn’t have to scrabble around for this information, being put on hold and left waiting for information we need; orbeing told the only place we can get the information is from our account manager.” He provides a case in point: “I was trying to find out information on bonds. I got the information from two providers but a thirdwouldn’t give me a price over the phone, or a reason why, they said I had to talk to the account manager who would call at the office. When he did, two weeks later, he explained they were doing bespoke pricingbased on size of case, etc. But by then he had missed the boat.”
To be fair, by the time we reach this topic we are half way through the interview and we’ve covered a lot of ground already, but it is a key frustration that will resonate with paraplanners across the country. [Product providers reading this please take note – if your service hinders rather than enables you are likely to be losing business as a result.] Fortunately, the saving grace for John, he says, “is that we have a fantastically good administrator who spends hours on the phone with providers and helps get us the information we need”. Not all paraplanners are that fortunate.
Becoming a paraplanner
Our conversation started with how John became a paraplanner. He joined BpH, a fee-based lifestyle Wealth Management practice headquartered in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, in May 2012 but he became a paraplanner by chance. His career started with the Britannia Building Society, first as a member adviser working on the counter and then as a savings adviser, “using decision trees to sell cash products,” he says. A move out of the area saw him looking for financial services work and he applied for an administrative role in a local IFA firm. By the time his interview came around that job had been filled but the firm had a paraplanner role available. He was offered and took the role on a trainee basis, although he admits that at the time he had “no idea what a paraplanner was”. He stayed at the firm for three years, during which time he took the certificate and diploma papers from the CII.
Since his move to BpH Wealth Management John has continued with his education and qualification gathering, including papers on mortgage and equity release advice, and is currently undertaking the Chartered Financial Planner qualifications. When he started as a trainee paraplanner, he says, he had little client contact and primarily serviced existing client portfolios by way of written correspondence. Nevertheless, the hands-on role provided a great foundation, as he had to deal with maturing investments, conduct research, write reports, provide recommendations and review portfolios in terms of their asset allocation.
Now, with five years paraplanning under his belt, his involvement in the full service to the client is far greater and more intense. He works alongside the financial planner, attending all client meetings and dealing with the follow up work thereafter, although all reports go out under the guise of the planner. While John mainly works for one planner, the founding partner of the business, he says a lot of the work he does benefits the whole firm, “such as being on the investment committee and doing a lot of the work on the governance of our portfolios, monitoring of funds, reviewing new funds that may be appropriate for our clients”. He also has input in terms of platform research and due diligence, the technology and processes used within the firm and other areas of the firm’s development.
