Sean Donald – The Timebank

24 June 2015

If there’s one thing Sean Donald, paraplanner with the TimeBank, strives to overcome, it’s the industry’s predilection to confuse clients with jargon.

“I hate to see a report that’s full of jargon,” says Sean Donald, paraplanner with outsourced paraplanning provider The TimeBank. “If I’m sitting there thinking I don’t understand it, then how on earth is the end client going to understand it?”

It is making things clear and easy for the client to understand that is one of the satisfactions of being a paraplanner, Sean says.

“Because we’re working with jargon and acronyms every day, it’s all too easy for us in the industry to forget that they mean absolutely nothing to other people. It’s too easy to become jargonised – and sometimes the people who are using the jargon are only doing so because they don’t know what it means.

“So what I try to do when writing reports is put things in clear, plain English. For example, if I’m writing in a report ‘Do you wish to crystallise 50% of your fund and leave 50% uncrystallised, ’ I’ll add in brackets (i.e. take the benefits from the fund) and (i.e. leave the benefits where they are), so the end client knows what it means.

Sean acknowledges that some firms have a Glossary at the back of the report explaining the terms but he adds, “I think it’s nice when you’re reading through to have it explained there and then. It gives me job satisfaction if I know I’ve written a good report that is well structured and clear for the end client to read and understand.

“It’s about taking the time to think like the end client and how they might read what you’ve written. I’ve had letters from clients saying how impressed they were with reports and how clear and easy to understand my reports are. That makes it very worthwhile.”

Likewise, he says, another enjoyable aspect of the job is where he can bring his many years’ experience and technical knowledge to bear on a particular case. “Sometimes an adviser isn’t quite sure where he wants to take the advice and he’ll ring up to talk it through and I can give him a couple of options which he can then take back to the client. It’s satisfying to be able to have that input into a case and if it’s good for the end client then it’s good for the adviser and for us at The TimeBank too,” he says.

UK-wide client base 

Sean is based in Northern Ireland and works from home but he deals with adviser clients all around the UK.

“There are three of us working for The TimeBank in Northern Ireland, myself, Niki Gahan and Louise Spence. We’re all qualified to Chartered Financial Planner level and we deal with a range of advice, from personal to corporate, which means we all keep our hand in writing a range of reports. We’re all round paraplanners,” Sean says. “We work with companies across the UK and of all sizes, from one man bands – who find it a great relief to have someone to whom they can outsource their reports, leaving them to concentrate on giving the advice to clients – through to larger companies where we might be used as complementary service to the in-house team or to help out when volumes get high.”

Just how involved they will get with case depends on the service the adviser wants. The firm offers two distinct paraplanning services, Express and Bespoke. Sean explains: “Paraplanning is whatever a firm wants it to be. Every IFA firm is different and will need different things from a paraplanner. Express is mainly report writing, so the adviser will give you all the information including the data harvesting from the product providers and we’ll write the report. With the Bespoke service, we take more control of the process, doing the data harvesting and having far more input into the case.”

The Express service, Sean says, is where clients often test the water with paraplanning. “When advisers ring up we’ll talk to them and take them through that process, what we do and what we offer. What we find is that once they’ve started using Express, they often move across to the Bespoke service. It’s a fillip when they do that, knowing they were happy with the way you worked with them on the Express service to want to take it further.”

Contact with the companies can vary too, he says. “Some advisers you talk to regularly, about the reports and having input into the tax and pension planning and so on, while other firms simply want a good, well written report based on the decisions they have made.”

However, report writing forms the core of Sean’s working day. “As we deal with a range of companies the work varies from bespoke reports, which require a lot of detail, to the more transactional. The way I look at it, each report is a challenge and getting it done well and accurately and as quickly as possible is all part of that challenge.”

Professional Paraplanner