While outsourced paraplanners should not pose a threat to in-house paraplanners, they can be seen that way, says Grant Callaghan, head of paraplanning, Para-Sols.
We’ve been thinking about this and can see how outsourced paraplanning may be seen as a threat by paraplanners inside a company – nothing personal, obviously! It’s just that when you hear ‘outsourced’ work, you do tend to worry about your own role.
So, can an internal paraplanner or paraplanning team benefit from an outsourced paraplanner, aside from the obvious scenario where extra paraplanning support is needed? We think they can and it’s more about teamwork and collaboration than anything else. Let us explain with a few examples where we see it happening in practice:
Exposure to more providers, products and advice areas.
This is not to say an inhouse paraplanner does not know certain products or advice types! If you naturally work on a narrow range of business, it is natural to fall out of the loop when it comes to other types of business.
It’s obviously dependent on the firm’s investment proposition and the scope of their services, but an outsourced paraplanner is likely to have had exposure to a wider range of providers and product types.
Although it has come mostly from advisers, we’ve had plenty of conversations that start with an explanation of how the firm has a client that has very different needs from those the firm usually deals with. If an outsourced paraplanner is asked this question, then instead of starting from scratch in the research process, a firm can lean on their experience.
This side is probably more useful when it comes to advice areas. For firms that don’t typically advise on certain types of products, it can be harder to know where to start when one of these scenarios comes up.
In our own experiences, we’ve helped paraplanning teams when they come to advise on less-standard areas and this doesn’t just include specialist products, simply anything the firm doesn’t deal with on a day-to-day basis.
Best practice from around the advice industry
Whether you work within a network, using an internal compliance team or using an outsourced compliance team, remember the outsourced paraplanner is likely to have exposure to multiple versions of each of these. Although it should be fairly clear what should and shouldn’t be included in the client file and suitability report, we know that there is a lot of interpretation required. Having access to the outcome of what everyone else is doing can only benefit your internal processes (if at least showing you where you already go beyond the ‘standard’!).
This may not be as important a factor for your day-to-day client cases, but it can be quite important when dealing with advice areas or product types that don’t come up as often for you internally.
Research processes
Linking on from best practice, your outsourced paraplanner is likely to have had exposure (whether directly or via the firms they work with) to different ways of approaching certain research requirements. Your firm may have a way of working on a certain type of client with a certain type of requirement and seeing a different approach can inspire you to change or update the way you approach your own research. This might be in ways around the tools that are available to help, or through developing your own internal aids to help you assess what you need to assess.
Summary
As an outsourced paraplanner, I always enjoy speaking to in-house paraplanners and the benefits described above work both ways. We’ve found insights from firm’s internal teams whether that is about providers, specific product types or in better practice when approaching a certain piece of advice.
An outsourced paraplanner can act as an additional level of support, in a variety of ways, and need not just be as a means of covering a spike in workload or covering an internal staff member’s absence from the team.
Para-sols can provide as much or as little paraplanning support as you need. Find out more here.
