Top tips to improve the daily working lives of Paraplanners were the subject for debate as The Paraplanners Powwow continued this afternoon.
Using technology to speed up daily tasks, time management, client meetings and more were discussed by the blue tribe, one of the groups of planners taking part in the Paraplanner Powwow conference taking place in teepees in Northamptonshire. Delegates were divided into tribes of different colours enabling debate and learning to take place in small groups

The question of how Paraplanners who sit on client meetings manage to not get dragged into giving into advice was raised. One delegate said he would sit in on an introductory meeting and then act as a locum for the adviser if they were on holiday and have a meeting on his own.

When asked why Paraplanners at her firm do sit in on client meetings, one speaker said it was all about developing the relationships with the client. She said she would not attend all meetings but for HNW clients that they have a strong relationship with she will tend to be present. She suggested Paraplanners make their own notes at client meetings.

She stressed the importance of the connection between Paraplanners, administrators and Financial Planners and how their roles are all interlinked.

They talked about how they work with the advisers at their firms. One said a good way of describing it is the adviser goes in to school but then the Paraplanner does the homework for them.

Some suggested that you have to manage or control the adviser and tell them “this is what we need to do the job”.

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Time management was one of the subjects raised. One Paraplanner said he dedicated whole days to specific tasks, for example client days for Tuesday and Wednesday or compliance on Monday, and sticks to that.

Some described setting themselves ‘lifeboat time’ or what they called a buffer day for mundane, tiny jobs, to get them all out of the way in one fell swoop.

One said Paraplanners need to value their own time as well and to make sure that colleagues were aware of when they set themselves time to work on their own on specific tasks.

Another Powwower explained that Xplan was key to saving time and being efficient. He said it allowed work items created on the program to be linked to a task from or thread and for different people to work on it. These are time bound, he said, for example, a job to carry through a pension transfer has a 10 day turnaround on it.

In terms of other methods, mind mapping was mentioned as being effective for some people, where as post it notes, with a colour code scheme, might work for others.

Fact find documents was another topic. One delegate said he frequently encounters problems with clients who are unwilling to fill out these kinds of forms via email because they are either not tech savvy or do not trust the internet. Much of his client base is aged 50 or above. He said it comes down to having enough information in the client meeting notes instead of making it a form filling exercise.

Another said that it was key to sell the reasons why it is beneficial to the client to complete the fact find at the start so they are happy to do it rather than putting up resistance.

Some of the top tech tips that were suggested by delegates included:

• Software called Trello: Helps to allocate time and people and using checklists to create a structured process. It is web hosted so can be accessed anywhere. A number of Paraplanners recommended this throughout the day, the main speakers said.
• The snipping tool on Windows was recommended to cut and paste information into other documents
• Using 2 monitors: A number of delegates said this was helpful. One said it took a while to get used to but speeds up processes. Allows, for example, a Paraplanner to view a PDF document on one and an Excel in another
• Skitch – tool for annotation
• Text expander called Breevy for Windows – for outlook email or Gmail – helps to save time by automatically expanding common abbreviations – for example the term IHT.