KEEPING A PARAPLANNER = CYCLING UPHILL?

Based on current industry research, the time that an average paraplanner in a financial advice business stays in their role is 18 months to 2 years. After this amount of time, they typically either decide to leave the profession or move on to a financial adviser role. The reasons for the move to financial advising are typically:

• More responsibility within financial advising role
• Higher pay structure as a financial adviser
• More autonomy
• Less administration (although this is questionable)

The options that a financial advising business have at this point are:

• Hire another junior paraplanner, invest in training and spend (on average) three months getting the paraplanner to a point where they are confident to take on mid-level advice documents.
• Hire a senior paraplanner and spend (on average) one month training them in your systems.
• Hire an outsourced contract paraplanner (either an in-house paraplanner or an off-site paraplanner). The training time for paraplanners whom I have overseen (offsite outsourced paraplanners) is typically one to two days.
• A combination of the above options.

I am absolutely bias in recommending contract outsourced paraplanning staff. I have seen the added flexibility and cost savings that businesses have achieved through having a paraplanner on call but not on “paid” call. With a myriad of tools to use for collaboration, the outsourced contract paraplanning position can either be the interim or long-term relationship that advisers need.