Committee participation
An important part of Alex’s role is participating in the firm’s operations and investment committees. “I do all of the research for the products that we use and am involved in the selection of investments we use in our centralised investment proposition (CIP) including talking to providers, attending seminars, the systems research. This is done on a quarterly basis.
“I also get involved in the finance side of things, pulling MI from the system, figures and statistics, RMAR reporting and so on,” he says.
In addition, he will conduct the research and due diligence into the platforms used by the firm – currently 7IM and Ascentric. “The platform due diligence is very in depth and we carry that out on an annual basis,” he says.
While Alex’s role is multi-functional, a lot of the other work feeds into the paraplanning role. He says: “A lot of the input from those committees I can bring back to the paraplanning team in our bi-weekly meeting, where we have a conference call to discuss what’s being going on in the team, how everyone’s doing and making sure everyone’s up-to-date with their work and discussing any issues anyone wants to raise.
“So we’ve recently updated our templates which Gill Jebbett undertook for us [Gill talked about this with PP in our September 2014 issue – Ed] and we also work as a team to develop the processes and work in the most efficient way possible.
“I’ll also run brief training sessions with the team to make sure we are all up-to-date on our technical knowledge and processes we should be following.”
As well as encouraging the firm’s paraplanners to aim for the highest qualification possible, Francis Clark also likes them to conduct the same level of CPD as the advisers, the minimum being 35 hours structured.
“While it can be difficult for paraplanners to keep up their CPD we do encourage them to do so and we’ll run some in-house sessions, such as technical training on a product or a system that we use,” Alex says. “For example, I’m just putting together a session with the compliance manager on pensions transfers, looking at the transfer process and how we can use our systems in the most effective manner. Paraplanners will also attend external seminars – retirement planning being a topical subject at the moment – and as Personal Finance Society (PFS) members we’ll also get online content from them that the team can listen to at their desks. And, of course, we’ll read Professional Paraplanner and other trade press for CPD as well.”
IFP committee member
While Francis Clark is a PFS member, Alex does sit on the Paraplanning Committee of the Institute of Financial Planning. This is an initiative he believes is helping to improve the standing and professionalism of paraplanning in the industry.
“Being on the committee involves meeting up with the other committee members twice a year, with aims to try to improve the visibility of paraplanning, to get more people involved in the profession, and to boost the professionalism and the career options around paraplanning. So we’ve discussed areas such as apprenticeships and initiatives like the ‘Ask a Paraplanner’ section on the IFP website has been developed from the paraplanning group,” he says.
“But if we want to improve the professionalism of paraplanning what I think we really need is a defined industry standard for the role, that gives the minimum a paraplanner has to do to be called a paraplanner. It would help clarify the role, help people understand what paraplanning is and help improve the professionalism. Also, if we want to improve the visibility of paraplanning outside of the industry I think this kind of role definition is essential.”
