We Heart Paraplanners
Paraplanning: The Best and the Worst of It
Paraplanning, like any job, has its good and bad points. What each individual Paraplanner enjoys about their job will vary, often significantly, from one person to the next. That said, looking at some of the key points common to a large cohort of paraplanners, offers interesting insights into the value of the paraplanning service they provide.
With many years of experience under my belt working with paraplanners, these resounding commonalities illustrate just how valuable a good Paraplanner really is!
Paraplanners love to show the value of advice.
There is nothing more satisfying than showing how the advice helps the clients. After all, that is what its all about! How can we help you achieve your financial goals and gain financial independence?! Being able to work through the modelling and show the outcomes in actual $$ is satisfying work.
Conversely, it is a commonly felt frustration to chase advisers for key information. Examples may include:
- Linking the advice to the client goals – how is the advice in their best interest?
- Missing key documents such as the fact find, insurance quotes or product research
- File notes!
Following up critical information chews into the time taken to prepare advice documents every day of the week.
When you get into it, there is no doubt the fun stuff is in the detail. Whilst some paraplanners get joy from knowing the strategies and the predictability that comes with that, many love the challenge that a fresh, creative strategy brings. Solving for new problems and making new gains for clients makes the role of paraplanners more dynamic, challenging and engaging. They love to be involved in the process of building strategies for clients.
Paraplanners are natural problem solvers.
In fact, Paraplanners love to solve problems and thoroughly enjoy this part of their paraplanning role. Products, platforms, portfolios, you name it, a paraplanner will research it and find the best fit. Given some autonomy in this space improves their overall job satisfaction for sure! If you have an investment committee, invite the paraplanner along. With all their research skills, paraplanners have considerable knowledge to contribute to these aspects of running an AFSL.
Paraplanners like to make sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed.
With keen attention to detail, a lot of paraplanners actually enjoy checking client files for completeness, advice documentation for compliance and stress-testing financial projections. Many have built robust systems and processes around the advice production process to support this. Which explains why so many paraplanners love creating efficiencies in what they do.
Paraplanners = process-oriented
Paraplanners are often process-orientated and are constantly looking for ways to cut out time wastage or duplication of effort. So it’s no surprise they don’t enjoy those parts of the job that seem manual, laborious and counter-productive to streamlined efficiency. Nod powers hyper efficient Paraplanners to perform at their peak with conditional logic programmed into document templates cutting document creation times by up to 80%! Nod's smart code-free automation eliminates the need for tedious and repetitive manual data entry for every Statement of Advice document. If there is a way to remove the edit, Nod does it! And paraplanners love it.
Paraplanners are here to help
And just because a paraplanner may not want to be client-facing, it definitely doesn’t mean they don’t want to help clients. Paraplanners are just as committed to giving quality financial advice as the advisers themselves… Just don’t assume they want to deliver it. They show their commitment to this through their dedication to professional development and their love of learning. And for that, we love them!
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