Challenges for paraplanners
Asked to name the biggest challenge for paraplanners in doing their job, Mandy is unequivocal in her reply. “It’s the providers and trying to get the right information from them in a timely manner. There are so many legacy products out there. When a client comes along with, on the face of it, a couple of simple pension plans to transfer, but as you start to dig deeper you discover they have long-held legacy products, you know it could take a long time to get the information out of the providers.”
Another challenge can be advisers, she admits. “They all have different personalities and styles and no matter what templates we have in place some advisers like doing things their way, so paraplanners have to be very flexible in the way that they work.”
But a good working relationship between advisers and paraplanners can be a significant advantage for the business, she adds. “We encourage our paraplanners to challenge advisers where they think it’s necessary and in the best interest of the client. And one of the advantages of having a central team is that they are working for so many different people in so many different areas of advice that their breadth of knowledge is vast, so they can actually be a great help to advisers in suggesting different ways of doing things,” she says.
A challenge for the business has been recruiting good quality paraplanners and where possible the company is now promoting from within, she says. “We have people in support who want to progress to be paraplanners so we’re encouraging that internally as I think that way you tend to get people whose qualities you already know and you also encourage greater loyalty.
“We have recently taken on a couple of less experienced paraplanners who we are training and for everyone who joins us we try to buddy them up with more experienced paraplanners to help with bringing them on board and cross checking of reports. That works quite well.”
Asked about the level to which paraplanners should be qualified, Mandy answers: “I think paraplanners need to be diploma level qualified as a minimum, ideally progressing towards chartered. We certainly need to be as qualified as financial advisers. That said, I would much rather have an experienced paraplanner than someone fresh to the industry who has all the bits of exam paper. But at the end of the day you’re going to need both.”
What makes for a good manager?
As to the qualities of a good manager, Mandy says that key is “to be flexible and fair”.
“You have to get to know everyone as an individual and understand what makes them tick. For example, new and younger team members often require more supervision than those that are experienced and some people respond well to delegation where others need more support.
“Also, if things go wrong then you need to increase your involvement and get things back on to an even keel. At the end of the day the team is the most important thing rather than the individual. It’s not always easy, you have to make difficult decisions sometimes but you have always to be working for the team.
“Seeing the team grow and flourish and be really good paraplanners is what makes it work for me,” she says. “My message to my team is that life is difficult and everyone has lots of balls they are trying to juggle but everyone has it in them to be brilliant – so be as brilliant as you can be.”
Three top tips for paraplanners
We asked Mandy to provide her three tips for paraplanners.
1. Communicate. My number one tip for paraplanners is to communicate. If you are not working alongside an adviser pick up the phone and talk to them. We need things in writing and via email because it confirms the instructions but so much can be missed in translation so they need to build the relationship with the adviser. Sometimes that’s not easy as the adviser might be out all day but that might mean picking up the phone early in the morning or in the evening. But you can get so much more out of a conversation because the adviser knows the client and they hold so much information in their head.
2. Planning ahead. Another tip is to plan as far ahead as possible. If you know you’re going to need information from providers then request it from them as early as you can.
As soon as you get a report request, go out for the information so you’re gathering as much information as early as possible so when it comes to writing the report you should have everything to hand and you can do it in one go.
3. Manage your time and expectations. My third tip is around time management. Email puts huge amount of pressure on everyone, so you need to manage expectations and there is nothing wrong with turning your email off for a couple of hours at a time to concentrate on a particular piece of work you are undertaking. I actively encourage my paraplanners to do that.
What would you like to see happen to make paraplanners’ lives easier?
All providers stating their charges and holding documentation for all legacy and current products on their websites. It seems so simple, yet as an industry we waste huge amounts of time trying to extract information and data from providers. We’re all going to be asking the same questions, so if they put the data where we could find it how much easier would all our lives be?
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