With a 30 year history, the Aberdeen Technical Team offers a variety of different ways paraplanners can approach it for technical information. We asked Andrew Zanelli, Head of Technical Engagement at Aberdeen Adviser (pictured), to tell us about the team and its work.
What’s the history of the Aberdeen technical team? How long has it been running? How many technical experts do you have. Do you have any particular specialisms within the team?
Originally starting as the Standard Life Technical Services Team, it has existed in its current guise for around 30 years. Prior to that there were regional technical teams and we still have team members that were part of the regional teams!
We are a well resourced team and have just brought in three new members in the last six months or so. As we deliver our technical content in a variety of ways we have a broad range of skills and specialisms. We have a team member who supports Techzone and our Bookable Consultancy service while notionally split between Tax and trusts, and Pension specialisms, there is a great degree of crossover.
The external facing team cover the broad range of high-net-worth client planning areas. Clients are unique and need advice that considers the impact across all of their asset wealth. Whilst we have a great deal of flexibility in tax wrappers and personal taxation it gets quite complex when dealing with HNW individuals – a broad technical understanding is crucial.
How do you engage with advisers and paraplanners? Through BDMs, website, direct…. ?
We deliver technical support in a number of different ways as we try to respond to the needs of advisers and paraplanners.
The cornerstone of our offering is Techzone. This is a huge technical resource for paraplanners with over 200 technical and practical guides, thought leadership articles and case studies. Techzone averages around 150,000 page views each month and is an incredibly popular resource which is open to all. As well as the core technical content which covers all of the main legislative and taxation issues that affect clients, we regularly provide thought leadership articles and insight content that look at the practical application and issues when giving advice.
Our bookable Consultancy service is available directly to a number of businesses we work closely with, and is available to any other adviser or paraplanner through their BDM relationship. Complementing this is an email service as some queries can be dealt with by providing the right source reference from Techzone or the relevant legislation. If an appointment is needed because it is a complex technical situation or the adviser/paraplanner wants to discuss a particular client case, one of our specialists will arrange a call. The external team deliver in a variety of ways based on the needs of the customer.
I have always believed that the business you are working with should drive the agenda and that the delivery needs to be fluid and agile rather than stick to a script. Whilst there will always be a core theme we can easily step outside this content to explore client situations or related issues. We mainly do face to face and virtual sessions for individual firms but we also do large seminars, workshops, individual adviser/paraplanner meetings, national roadshows etc.
Roughly how many requests a year do you respond to?
The number of touchpoints we have with advisers/paraplanners continues to grow year on year. Techzone had over 920,000 hits in 2024, up 17% on 2023. Our Bookable Consultancy service was used over 2,750 times last year and the team dealt with another 2,500 technical queries via the email service. The external team delivered nearly 400 technical events to a variety of different audiences. Bearing in mind this was before the recent recruitment I am excited to see how far we can reach in 2025. These figures are just the external client touchpoints, the team also provide the technical expertise and oversight across our own distribution team and a number of internal functions.
How often are you posting on the Techzone and what kind of topics are you covering typically?
Techzone is so vast that we are constantly reviewing and renewing the existing content but we typically post two thought leadership articles each month, covering topical themes.
What have been the top five articles on the Techzone year to date?
Our top five guides this year (up to end of May)
- Discretionary trust – 44,494 page views
- Taxation of bonds – 37,280 page views
- Tax free cash and the lump sum allowance – 29,167 page views
- Residence nil rate band – 25,224 page views
- Lump sum death benefit allowance – 19,755 page views
What have been the subjects most asked about by advisers and paraplanners since the Autumn Statement?
Unsurprisingly the main subject since the Autumn Statement has been the proposals to bring Pensions into the scope of IHT from April 2027. In saying that there are a number of themes that interlink as advisers/paraplanners are dealing with the outcome of three significant events:
November 2022 – changes to CGT annual exemption and the dividend allowance reignited the discussion of the balance between OEICs and Investment Bonds, after the use of Pension and ISA.
The abolition of the LTA moving to a new era of the LSA and LSDBA – this was a fundamental change to pensions and was primarily around Tax Free cash, a very emotive subject for clients.
Autumn Statement 2024 – Not just Pensions and IHT, the extended freeze of the IHT NRB and proposed changes to AR and BR IHT reliefs. Another very emotive issue for clients.
I have been saying that, whilst advice has never been easy (and I was an adviser in the past) it has become more complex since November 2022. This was almost a “high water mark” particularly for clients to do their own thing. Anecdotally many advisers I am speaking to are seeing 2-3 times as many new client enquiries and referrals as they were 18 months ago. This is great news for our profession.
The six main areas we are asked about are:
- Pensions and IHT
- The balance of Investment Bonds and OEICs
- Appropriate trust discussions as advisers look at possible alternatives if IHT does apply to pensions in the future.
- Which clients will benefit from a TTFAC
- Taxation of Investment Bond gains
- Personal tax allowances in general – CGT Income tax
Why is having a technical team to support advisers and paraplanners important to Aberdeen?
As an adviser-focussed platform our drive is to increase the efficiency of the adviser businesses that we partner with to allow the advisers and paraplanners to focus on the really important thing – clients. A big part of delivering quality advice is to understand the current legislative and tax framework that applies to each client. Lots of clients are not new and will have accumulated a number of investments and tax wrappers over time. There are often transitional or old rules that apply to some older contracts and different rules can apply to prior planning, for example IHT situations. Our role is to make sure that this is considered when giving advice today – making advisers/paraplanners aware of certain issues at a high level and then providing the in depth support they need to ensure the client gets the best outcome. We provide an incredibly valuable service which lets the adviser/paraplanner do what they do best with the comfort of a team of eleven experienced technical experts at their disposal.
Are there any areas you feel to which paraplanners should ensure they pay particular attention now?
I cannot say that there are specific issues that I would call out. I would refer to a couple of my favourite sayings;
Every day is a school day in our profession – its why my team love what we do. Things are changing all the time so we need to keep up with this technically.
There is no such thing as a stupid question.
My point is that our reason for being is that our job is to understand this stuff in depth. I regularly ask my team members for their opinions and views on a subject as that is the powerful thing and I definitely like to seek reassurance on some of the more niche client situations. The teams average length of experience is 30 years on technical issues and they have worked through the changes as they happened. Often it is only when you have to apply this to clients situations, sometimes very niche and one off, that you build the understanding. Some of the issues we have dealt with affect a handful of clients across the country – advisers/paraplanners won’t want that to be their client and not be aware of the issues. Just ask. Adviser businesses are very used to working with others to effectively outsource or get support for complex areas of what they do – why would technical be any different?
