“There is so much more to the job now and I probably only spend 20 percent of my time doing hands-on paraplanning now. I manage people, resources, I’m shaping the way advisers present things to the clients, and helping to choose which avenues we take the business down and the service we provide. I don’t make the final decisions but I’m certainly having input to them. I feel I’m helping to take the business forward and that’s great.”
Winning awards
Scooping both the IFP Paraplanner of the Year award and the PFS Paraplanner of the Year award reflects Rebecca’s ambitions as a career paraplanner. She received the IFP award in 2008, and was the first person to win it. At the time it wasn’t an official IFP award but rather it was an award created by Richard Allum through his company The Paraplanners but which was adopted by the IFP as part of its support of the paraplanner community. “It was presented at the IFP conference so there was a link there although it wasn’t officially an IFP brand at that time,” Rebecca says. “But it was the very first one and I was astounded to win it.” The Institute formally adopted the award in 2011.
As might be expected she feels entering the awards was well worth the effort. “My view is if you’re not in it your can’t win it. I’m sure there are plenty of people who are equally as good as me out there but they just don’t enter these competitions. I would definitely encourage anybody to have a go, because nothing ventured is nothing gained.”
It’s also been a win for the company, she says, relating it back to the business. “As a relatively new company the directors energy and focus has been on building up the business and getting the right proposition and getting the right fee income coming through the door and all the other things that they have to worry about, so it’s only now they are beginning to have time to work more on marketing and increasing the profile of the company. So this is a good step towards that,” she says “And we’ve got a couple of other award applications out there at the moment too.”
