Before we sit down to talk about paraplanning, Rachel Kitching, Head of Operations at Cooper Parry Wealth, gives me a tour of the firm’s new offices.
Cooper Parry Wealth is the financial planning arm of the Cooper Parry group, which offers audit and business advice for private and family firms. Cooper Parry joined accountancy network PKF International in December 2013, becoming PKF Cooper Parry, which was followed by the move to the new office building on a business park next to East Midlands airport.
The building is standard red brick, tiles and glass; what is different about the PKF Cooper Parry office is what’s inside. The company brought in professional designers to build an internal landscape that reflects the culture of the company, Rachel says, which is to develop a professional workplace that is relaxed and flexible and will nurture the talent and skills of its highly qualified and technical staff. This includes large areas designated as quiet areas, where people can take themselves away from their desks to work free of telephone and other distractions, as well as ‘themed’ rooms such as the Idea Pods or the Library, or the ‘Dream’ room, decked out with giant bean cushions and brightly coloured inflatable balls.
Our interview was to have taken place in the ‘Tree House’, a room with foliage wallpaper and a rope swing hanging from the ceiling but it was booked out, so instead we head to ‘The Lounge’, a room decked out with four comfy leather arm chairs, a standard lamp and wallpaper depicting the bookshelves in a library. This is the room where members of the Cooper Parry Wealth team meet clients when they come to the office.
The working atmosphere is a clear indication of the mindset of the company itself, which, Rachel says, is about “encouraging passion and innovation, best practice, continuous development and above all, putting the client first.”
It’s also culture that has seen Rachel come into Cooper Parry Wealth as a paraplanner with six years experience, take on a financial planner role and, following what CEO Stephen Jones described as the firm’s “ extremely strong growth trajectory”, become part of the newly designated five-strong management team that is going to lead the business forward.
Rachel’s background and experience
Rachel is a certified financial planner and is currently working towards Chartered Financial Planner with an eye to Fellowship of the CII. In 2010 she was awarded the PFS Highest Achiever in the Diploma in Financial Planning, for the highest marks and number of distinctions of PFS members nationally.
She has gone the Certified route initially, she says, because “it’s more about the holistic application of the financial planning. That is something that I felt was very important for me to do.” It is also the route that the firm is encouraging its staff to follow, “planners and paraplanners all expected to achieve certified financial planner status,” she says.
So how did she start off in paraplanning? Advised at 18 to “do the degree that I was interested in and make a decision on a career thereafter”, she took drama at university after which she fell into administration work in a small IFA firm. “I enjoyed the job for all sorts of reasons but I particularly enjoyed the technical and the people aspects of it and I saw that it was a great opportunity to continue to study and become technically proficient in an interesting area.”
This in turn led to her deciding her next move would be into “a full technical paraplanning role and also with a holistic financial planning firm”. She joined Chesterton House Financial Planning in 2004 and stayed until 2008, when she felt it was time to move on. “I really enjoyed the role because it was really varied. It was a technical adviser role, so as well as the report writing I was on the end of a telephone to help the other employees at the firm with any technical queries. I really enjoyed that kind of on-the-spot questioning; it kept me really sharp.”
