Paraplanning  

Advisers should not be 'snotty' towards less qualified paraplanners

This is not the only way his business had been radical in its approach to work. Davies has always offered his staff remote working long before it became popular after Covid. 

 He said: “I started the business 20-years ago because I had a young daughter and I was commuting a couple of hours everyday and I thought that was nuts.

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"That is why I did it, but others have different motivations for remote working. For example, for travel, looking after pets and animals or even elderly relatives.”

Interestingly, he has also noticed that more advisers are opting for outsourced paraplanning services.

This popularity has meant he has grown his business from a one-man-band to now hiring 40 people within two decades.

He argues that this is because there are multiple benefits to outsourcing, which includes it being the more cost-effective option.

He also says outsourcing allows advisers to benefit from best practice.

Davies said: “A lot of people come to us because we touch a lot of firms and can see what everyone else is doing. One of our most commonly asked questions is ‘how is everyone dealing with that’. 

“An employed paraplanner will have a deeper but more narrow knowledge base of how their firm works. Whereas we have a shallower but wider knowledge base of all of the platforms and all of the different back office systems.”

Aamina Zafar is a freelance financial journalist