English to Greek Bus/Financial Finance (general)

(http://www.proz.com/kudoz/english_to_spanish/insurance/33811...

(http://www.theparaplanner.com/2008/03/28/what-is-a-paraplann...

What is a paraplanner and what do they do?

In short a paraplanner is a person who works with a Financial Planner or Financial Adviser and completes a number of the non-client facing tasks involved in preparing and administering a Financial Plan or Report for a client.

Perhaps a little bit of history would help to explain this further.

Up to approximately 10 years ago paraplanners in the UK did not exist. Advisers had their clients and would tend to complete everything involved in the planning process with the exception of processing any applications though in many instances advisers did this themselves also.

Advisers realised that some of these basic administrative tasks could be undertaken by another person thus allowing them more time to see clients. At this time there were a number of Financial Advisers and Planners who felt that their strengths lay more in the technical/report writing aspect of preparing the financial plans rather than the explaining and discussing the plans with clients.

Also at this time a number of administrators were wondering how their careers would move on. Administrators did not necessarily want to become advisers and yet they wanted to put the knowledge they had gained over the years to more effective use.

This created a role almost sandwiched between that of an adviser and administrator. The role initially appeared to be a ‘Senior Administrator’ but it is this role that has developed over the years into the role of paraplanner.

A paraplanner then is a person who is variously described as:

An administrator (we are much more than that)
An Adviser’s secretary/PA (we should be equal to the adviser)
A highly technical and qualified individual who can offer skills in addition to those of the adviser to provide the client with a positive professional experience.
What does a paraplanner do?

This is a very difficult question to answer as all Financial Planners and Advisers require slightly different things from their paraplanners, however there are some core financial planning skills that all paraplanners perform to a lesser or greater extent and would form the basis of any Paraplanning role. These are:

Excellent report writing skills
Ability to analyse statistics
Ability to conduct research for appropriate providers and investments
Good understanding of compliance issues
Good time management skills
Excellent interpersonal and IT skills
A paraplanner can and will be asked to undertake various other tasks depending on what is actually required by the adviser or the company for whom the paraplanner works so this list should not be seen as either exclusive or exhaustive.In addition paraplanners asked to undertake the tasks listed above will be at different stages of their careers, they will have different abilities both technical and personal and be able to perform these tasks to different standards.

Therefore, in much the same way as the role of the FP has changed to allow them more time to do the things they are good at (spending more time with clients) so, I feel, the role of the paraplanner should now be more clearly defined.