Launch of The Paraplanner Club

14 January 2021

This week sees the launch of The Paraplanner Club, a new initiative devised by Siân Davies Cole and Chloe Phillips, a mentoring scheme designed by paraplanners for paraplanners.

The Paraplanner Club is sponsored by Professional Paraplanner.

It opens its doors on January 17, International Mentoring Day. The Paraplanner Club has been recruiting mentors over the past few months and now has a number of volunteers ready to provide help and guidance to their peers.

Paraplanners will be able to book mentoring sessions, typically of an hour, to talk through any issues they may have at work, or in the work/life balance. They will be allocated a mentor who can best advise on the questions or issues they have raised.

All conversations will be held in accordance with a signed agreement and in the strictest confidence.

The mentors will offer general help and guidance as well as having specialist areas.

This could include talking through a particular work situation, handling a situation with a manager or colleague, help in sourcing technical information, through to career guidance such as how to become a paraplanner or help in defining goals, and so on.

However, Siân and Chloe stress that for regulatory reasons, mentors cannot provide advice on individual cases.

Talking about the catalyst for the formation of the Club, Chloe (left) says: “The Paraplanner Club came out of the realisation that most industry mentoring schemes have been designed with advisers in mind and primarily have adviser and IFA business owners as mentors and mentees. We felt that didn’t work for us, as paraplanners have very different requirements to advisers. So we devised The Paraplanner Club as a mentoring scheme designed by paraplanners, for paraplanners.”

“We are excited to be able to launch The Paraplanner Club as an initiative which exists to help the paraplanning community in a direct and positive way,” Sian (below) says.

“We’ll agree what the mentee wants to get out of the session and the mentors will try to help them achieve that. They will be practical sessions and the aim will be for the mentee to look positively at things, to take ownership of the situation and to have action points to help implement a solution.

“It’s also a place where people with experience and expertise as paraplanners who want to give back to the paraplanning community can get involved.”

Paraplanners who want to know more, to book a session as a mentee or to become a mentor, can do so on The Paraplanner Club website from 17 January at: www.TheParaplannerClub.co.uk.

Siân is director of Plan Works and Chloe is client services manager at Garbutt and Elliott Wealth Management.

You can read a full interview with Sian and Chloe in the February 2021 issue of Professional Paraplanner out online on 28 January.

Professional Paraplanner