Siân Davies Cole, head of paraplanning at Aspirations, talks to Rob Kingsbury about what she believes it takes to run a paraplanning team and how she had to adapt her plans to grasp her dream role when it arose
Head of paraplanning at Aspirations is the role Siân Davies Cole was waiting for, she says. She brings to it 13 years of experience as a paraplanner in financial planning firms as well as working for the wealth management arm of a large bank.
Siân believes that as the influence of paraplanners within advice firms and the industry continues to grow, there will be more paraplanners moving into management roles. But she is of the firm opinion that to head up a paraplanning team you need a depth of experience and technical knowledge gained on the job.
“I don’t believe you can just put a people manager in charge of a team of paraplanners. I’ve seen that done and it didn’t work well because they didn’t know the job. You need to have the experience on the ground and to have gone through the exams and know the technical detail to be able to give the team the support it needs,” she argues. “That experience and knowledge also means you have the confidence and expertise to help people develop and from a business perspective, to sit down with directors and see things in the bigger picture.”
Siân had several roles during her years with the bank, from working in branch, through paraplanning for advisers dealing with the bank’s ultra high net worth clients and undertaking compliance checks on advice files. It also included a period based in Jersey as paraplanning manager dealing with financial advice for ex-pats around the world.
There was a lot of moving of roles, she says, “but you have to understand how banks work. For instance, I was involved in a year-long project which then got scrapped. It means you have to be prepared to change roles and take opportunities when they arise.”
It’s a pragmatic view she has brought with her into her financial planning career.
During her time with the bank she studied for her Diploma and Chartered qualifications. This was mainly the IFS qualification route – “I prefer thinking around coursework to cramming for an exam” – but also some CII qualifications. However, having achieved Chartered status she found that to progress further in the bank meant she had to become a financial adviser or to move into compliance full time, “neither of which appealed to me, so I started to look around”.
By this time she was based in her native Bristol. She took a chartered paraplanner role with Attivo Group in Cheltenham, heading up a small team consisting of herself, a paraplanner and an administrator. “The company was actively acquiring client banks at the time and our role was to go through a rigorous process of reviewing all acquired clients’ plans and portfolios to ensure they conformed with company policy.”
Siân says her years paraplanning for the bank had been mainly investment focussed and starting work in a holistic financial planning firm meant she was exposed to a far wider range of planning opportunities. “It was a bit like being thrown in the deep end. I was dealing with a lot of new areas, such as capital gains tax management, IHT and pension planning. Attivo also had an in-house SIPP provider and a commercial property team, which was something I‘d not dealt with before. I learned a lot.”
A desire to work closer to home saw her join The Citimark Partnership in Bristol, which offered the opportunity to work on complex financial planning for very wealthy clients, utilising vehicles such as EIS, VCTs, AIM investments and trusts. She started in a team of five paraplanners, of which three were chartered, and after a year moved into a senior paraplanner role. She worked directly for the CEO. “He liked the client side of things and I liked all the technical stuff so we worked well as a team. It also meant I got to deal with some of the most interesting clients with the most complex of situations.”
Although enjoying the role, after becoming a mother and her subsequent need for greater work/life flexibility, combined with a minimum of an hour’s commute each way across Bristol, Siân decided to look for a role even closer to home.
“It was then that the head of paraplanning role at Aspirations came up, with an office literally on my doorstep. It was the perfect opportunity.”
Defining the role
While Aspirations has a long history in the financial advice market, the firm saw a management buy-out in September 2018 and Siân’s recruitment was part of the new partners’ plans for the future of the business, which included the development of the paraplanning proposition.
“When I joined in April 2019, I could see that there wasn’t the rigorous paraplanning support system that the business needed. While everything was working and compliant, there was no formal structure or written down procedure for doing things, which meant there could be a lack of consistency in our approach.” This is where her years of experience gained in the bank and her previous financial planning roles came in, she says. “I could see that we needed to put in place greater organisation, formalise our systems, processes and procedures, as well as documenting them, and also to listen to and scope out the team and make sure that as far as possible, everyone was in the right role for them, then drafting job descriptions that were appropriate to that.”
While taking on a role as challenging as this one didn’t neatly fit with the work/life balance Siân had originally pictured, she says it was a case of being pragmatic and seizing the day. “I knew this was the rare kind of opportunity that you have to take because you never know when or if it will arise again. I knew I could make it work because I am so close to home. It sounded like a great prospect and it has turned out to be one.”
The Aspirations paraplanning support team consists of Siân, an administrator, two senior administrators, a paraplanner and a senior paraplanner. On a day-to-day basis Siân says this means she has an oversight across the whole advice process, covering everything from the basic administration tasks through to complex estate planning.
Since taking the role in April, the majority of her time has been involved in putting in place the support needed for the business, “so I know we are doing everything we need to do in a structured way within the firm.” She oversees the team and the workflow and while she no longer writes suitability reports, she allocates and spot checks the cases being written and provides technical support to the financial planners as and when needed.”
Make a difference
Throughout her career Siân says she has worked on the principle of making a difference. She explains: “I want to feel that I’m adding value to anyone I work with. This includes informal coaching and helping members of my team get on, whether that is through increasing their technical knowledge and their skills or formulating a plan to help them achieve what they want to in their career. That’s because that’s what I would want. Over the years I’ve found that you don’t always get the support that you want or that you need and often that can be because no-one asks you. It’s important that everyone feels like they are on the right path for them.
“Where we can make a difference for the advisers is in making their lives easier. Their skills set is seeing the clients, doing the business and bringing in the fees. We save them time by dealing with the technical work, providing expertise and helping formulate the recommendations, so they can get on with what they do best.”
Looking ahead, Siân says her ambition is to be a director or on the board of a financial planning firm. “I want to be more involved in a firm. I like to influence where I am.
“That’s why my role here at Aspirations is my dream job to date. I know what the directors want and I’ve been given the responsibility and the authority to do what’s necessary. It’s a challenge but there’s a huge amount of satisfaction in taking it on.”
Tips for heading up a paraplanning team
Siân says her three top tips are:
1. To make sure that you understand the role you are overseeing. The best way to get respect from your team is to be able to do the role that you’re asking them to do. Don’t be afraid to get hands-on.
2. Think about your staff and their development. See how you can help them be the best they can be at their job.
3. Be openminded and flexible. You have to be open to being challenged and to accept feedback and criticism. Ask and listen to people’s opinions. People are far more willing to take things on board if they feel they have had an input or they have been given the opportunity to have an input.
