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A Day in the Life of an Authorised Chartered Paraplanner

Chris Adams, Authorised Chartered Financial Planner and Paraplanner at Gibbs Denley Financial Services.

What does it mean to be a Chartered Paraplanner?

For the Chartered Insurance and Chartered Investment and Securities Institute, I’m a “Chartered Financial Planner” because that’s the only title you can use with Chartered status.

In reality, 40% of my time is spent paraplanning for advisers, 10% in supporting colleagues, 20% in advising and 50% in writing reports (and no, it doesn’t add up!).

Find out more about Chris’ role in his video below:

My role is to:

Provide paraplanning and advisory support to the Managing Director and his clients.
Provide technical support to Directors and Advisers.
Para-plan as a senior member of the “Nerd Herd” (Para-planning team!).
Advise c. 100 of my own clients and on-boarding a few potential clients per year.
Contribute to business challenges and changes such as consumer duty and the transition to a “financial planning-first” business.

What does a typical day look like?

A Day in the Life of an Authorised Chartered Paraplanner:

Pre-work: I like to get into work at around 8am to grab a coffee and work out my day.

AM: I’ll check emails before devoting the morning to larger pieces of work, such as report writing, lifetime cashflow forecasting and substantial emails to clients.

I’m a big fan of “deep work” which is I understand as dedicating a good block of time to one substantial piece of work. I tend to get allocated:

Trust cases (I now have a merit in the STEP certificate for IFA’s – to evidence my interest in this area)
Defined Benefits reports and more complex pensions reports.
Pure financial planning proposals.
Tax issues…

PM: The aim is to push direct advising and support functions into the afternoon. This tends not to occur. I will:

Help Advisers and Director-Advisers with technical queries.
Support senior paraplanner with creating financial plans and my own cases.
Support administrative colleagues with my own cases and the processing other adviser’s work.
Deal with client advice requests.

What else is involved?

There are tasks that are less frequent than daily, such as:

Client meetings, both existing and new clients.
Monthly “Senior Tech Team Brainstorming” sessions.
Quarterly training days.
Continued Professional Development, including an extra 15 hours a year for Pension Transfer Specialists.

This mix results in very varied days, which go very quickly. I am planning to specialise in future, by removing lower net worth clients and focusing on my other duties, as the company itself also focuses on higher net worth clients.

WHERE CAN I FIND OUT MORE?

For more information on the different paths to becoming a Paraplanner, including qualifications, exams and salary information, check out the Paraplanner Role Profile.

Read our Certificate in Paraplanning FAQ’s to find out information such as;