It has been encouraging recently to read about the increasing numbers of Financial Planners and Paraplanners completing their Level 6 (and higher) qualifications.

Lindsay John, one of our senior Paraplanners at EQ Investors, graduated recently as a Fellow of the Personal Finance Society and I also saw Rebecca Tuck from Magenta Financial Planning celebrate completing her Certified Financial Planner qualification with the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment.

We press on to these higher standards because we want to learn, serve, and grow as professionals.

As the dust settles and routine returns, I wonder what thoughts will be going through our recent graduates’ heads. Will they have pride in their achievement? Quite rightly so. Will they be pining after more exams? Possibly. Will they be wondering how they will get their CPD hours without exam study? Good - It’s helpful to be intentional in what we learn. Will they be looking for a new challenge? Quite probably. I hope that they will also be looking at how they, and others, might help inspire their colleagues and encourage them in their journeys.

In the Paraplanner community we have benefited greatly from the investment of individuals coming together to do just this; inspire others. This runs alongside the support that the professional bodies have been providing and the events that product providers have started to put together.

Certainly, on the professional body front it is panels of passionate Paraplanners who are setting the agenda. Partnering in this way provides a multiplication of impact as the body provides the practical resources to make things happen.

Events such as the CISI Paraplanner Conference in June (www.cisi.org/ppc19) take a lot of planning. So, thank you CISI and PFS – and also thank you to the Paraplanners who give up their time to sit on their panels.

Some of the most powerful learning, growing and engaging experiences are not from such structured events. You might have noticed that I described Paraplanning as a community. In a community we share ideas and provide support to each other. There is something quite organic about these peer-to-peer interactions and this is what the Paraplanners PowWow movement is all about. Informal gatherings designed by Paraplanners for Paraplanners to exchange views, learn things, fix things and share things.

Aside from the main national PowWow event (the one with the teepees and the face paint!) there are a whole host of much smaller local get togethers. I’m helping run our London event on 20 May (Sold out, but do join the waiting list), but between now and the end of June we also have sessions in Edinburgh and (NEW) Salisbury. We use the unconference format where it’s the people who turn up who provide the content. Everyone has a voice and is encouraged to share their views without judgement.

So, if you are a Paraplanner who is asking some of these ‘what next’ type questions why not come along to one of the local PowWows? Share your experiences, get fresh perspectives, and try something new. Full details can be found on the PowWow website https://paraplannerspowwow.co.uk/

Dan Atkinson FPFS Chartered MCSI APP is a Chartered Financial Planner and is Head of Technical at EQ Investors in London. @DanAtkinsonUK. e: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.