The IFP has announced details of this year’s conference taking place on 24 May in Nottingham. Last year’s event was a great success and this year it looks even better with some great speakers lined up.

Having said that, the best thing about this event is the chance to meet other paraplanners from all sorts of backgrounds, share experiences and make lasting contacts. I’m going and it would be good to see and meet as many of you as possible.

If you are going please add a comment below and we can say hello.  Full details are available here.

Over the weekend we moved the site to a new, faster server in advance of some new features. Unfortunately we ‘lost’ some of the users who joined the forum during February and also all forum posts this month too.  Sorry about that.  If you try to log in and can’t please sign up again and then follow these instructions.

Wizard Learning has been very helpful to this site over the years and has just published a new presentation on this subject. With the RDR implementation date less than 12 months it is well worth watching and can be found here to make sure you are aware of the professionalism and gap fill requirements that advisers need to have in place by 1 January 2013.

The presentation covers all these professionalism and gap fill requirements:

• Appropriate and transitional qualifications
• Accreditation and accredited bodies
• Identifying knowledge gaps and gap filling
• Statement of Professional Standing (SPS)
• CPD requirements
• CPD and gap fill solutions

So go to www.paraplannercensus.com now to share your views on this month’s interesting topics! 

The role of the paraplanner is gaining increasing prominence with a number of industry publications including sections for paraplanners.

Professional Adviser recently published a really interesting article under the heading ‘how paraplanners can make a difference in volatile markets’ which included comment from both an adviser and his paraplanner. It provided some interesting insights into how they work together and how the adviser has used paraplanners to his advantage.

You can read the whole article here

Many thanks to Professional Adviser for allowing us to republish the article.

A big thank you to all those who took a couple of minutes to complete the first 2-minute survey a month ago. The results were interesting if not surprising showing that paraplanners still spend the majority of their time writing reports and undertaking research.

Risk profiling is an area which is getting increasing attention and in the second 2-minute survey there are a few very quick questions about risk profiling; it would great if as many paraplanners as possible could take a couple of minutes just to answer a few very simple questions.

For those that have not taken part already the link is below

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ParaplanningRiskProfiling

If you know of any other paraplanners who may not have seen this, please feel free to send the link onto them also.

If you didn’t manage to complete the first survey (that takes only 30 seconds!) you can still do so by clicking the link below.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/739MC9X

Thanks for your help

The Paraplanner.com has been working with NMG now for over 2 years and together we have been conducting the most comprehensive survey of paraplanners and paraplanning in the UK.

The survey is now conducted twice a year and comprehensively looks at the individuals who are paraplanning, their demographics, their role and the influence they have within their practices.

The most recent survey was conducted in May 2011 and the results of that survey can be found here.

A big thank you to all those who took part; for those who have not yet been involved, it would be great to have you on board and for you to take part in the next survey which will be at the end of this month.

If you are not already involved please register your interest by forwarding your details to martin@theparaplanner.com.

In one of the earlier posts I said that one of the highlights of this year’s conference was Nick Murray who gave an enlightening and entertaining key note speech about investing and in particular Behavioural Finance.

The content of his presentation was summed up extremely well by Andy Jervis of Chesterton House in a news letter he sent to all his clients. Andy’s newsletter summed up Nick’s presentnation far better than I could have done and also shows a practitioner’s view.

The newsletter is reproduced below (a big Thank You to Andy, Richard and all the team at Chesterton House for allowing us to reprint this here).

Andy is a leading Bacharach practitioner and you can find out more about him and his practice here.

Andy’s newsletter…..

This week my colleagues and I attended the Annual Conference of the Institute of Financial Planning at the Celtic Manor in Newport, and we learned some valuable information.

You may think that, at a time of lurid newspaper headlines about the dire state of the world economy and the markets that feed them, this would be a rather downbeat and pessimistic affair. On the contrary, in reality there was not only an air of calm professional composure but also a sense of real energy and enthusiasm for helping people to properly plan, prepare and implement their financial futures. The Institute, focusing as it does on professional qualifications, financial planning expertise and skilled practical application, seemed like a body whose time has come.

Undoubtedly the highlight of the three-day conference was a talk by renowned American commentator, Nick Murray. Nick compared the current financial crises with repeated similar events throughout history, and reminded everyone that, during his (admittedly long) lifetime the value of equity markets has risen around 100 fold, without taking into account the substantial dividend income that has been generated over that time.

Nick forcefully pointed out, however, that most investors never receive these returns. That’s because they invariably view equity markets as short-term instruments, trying to time their entry and exit to suit changing conditions, and destroying their long-term returns in the process. Nick went on to explain three fundamental principles and three practices that, in his view, lead to long-term investment success. As they very closely reflect our own philosophy we are delighted to repeat them here.

Basic Principles

The first and most important principle is faith in the future. The simple fact is that, despite the inevitable downs that occur in all markets whether they be stocks, bonds or bananas, the price of all these items continues their inexorable rise over time. The basic laws of economics dictate that this must be the case, and this fundamental belief is essential to keep sight of through thick and thin.

The second principle is patience. Frequently it’s hard to hang on to your faith in the teeth of the raging economic storms that come and go from time to time. Yet hang on you must if you are to feel the long-term benefits from your strategy. Capitulating when everything looks blackest is almost always the worst possible time to do so.

The third principle is discipline. Not only must you be prepared to wait for your faith to be rewarded, but you must continue to do the things that are required, regularly and consistently. It’s in this area that working with an adviser can be a real benefit, helping to keep you on the straight and narrow and not lose sight of your goals and your plan.

Real life practices

Supporting these principles are three specific practices.

Firstly, you need to choose an appropriate asset allocation. Having the right mix of equities, bonds, property and cash is crucial to your long-term returns, and the nature of the mix is something that shouldn’t be varied without extremely good reason. It’s likely that, unless your time horizon is particularly short, equities will be the major component because that’s where the long-term returns have consistently come from. Nick pointed out that a couple retiring at age 62 have a joint life expectancy of 30 years, and if you’re going to maintain the value of your money over that sort of time period it is vital that you invest appropriately.

The second practice is diversification. This means spreading money into a wide range of investments to reduce the risk of loss. As Nick put it, you’ll never have so much money in any one stock that you will make a killing in it, but neither will you have so much money in any one stock that you will be killed by it. Protecting against losses is the key to long-term investment success.

Third and last is rebalancing. This means that you need to periodically readjust your portfolio to reflect the asset allocation that you started out with. Doing this forces you to do what most investors realise they should do but rarely achieve, namely to buy low and sell high. Doing this consistently over time adds value to your investments and helps to ensure that they don’t get so out of kilter that they’ll be severely damaged by a financial storm.

Getting Results

These principles and practices are ones that we’ve followed for many years, and if you’re one of our clients we think you’ll agree that the results speak for themselves. Following this type of plan means that, far from panicking when markets can’t make their mind up what to do as at present, you too will be exhibiting an air of calm professional composure like your adviser.

If you want to know more about our process, just ask!

Sincerely,

Andy Jervis

Over the past year there have been a number of new initiatives for paraplanners which is excellent. The role is becoming more established and is proving popular for individuals coming into the industry as well as those looking for a long term career.

To get an appreciation of this Paragon Paraplanning is launching a series of 2-minute surveys. They are very simple with very few questions, which will literally take two minutes to complete.

It would be great if you could take part. It would also be brilliant if you could tell others who you think would like to take part.

Just click here and answer a few simple questions; it will take 2-minutes!

Thank you

The IFP continued with their theme of promoting the role of the paraplanner at this year’s recent conference held at Celtic Manor near Newport in Wales.

The conference had the usual format of ‘track’ sessions where you could select from a number of different sessions depending upon your interest along with Key Note speeches, the Gala Dinner and a number of Panel Sessions.

For a paraplanner the conference was particularly interesting as the committee had tried to include sessions which would be appropriate to their role.

Paraplanners were not restricted to any particular session however there were some like Tax and Financial Planning by Tony Wickenden, or Behavioral Finance by Colum Wilde which they may have felt were appropriate however there were many other sessions they could attend depending on whether they were interested in a technical aspect, business planning, personal development or perhaps compliance.

There were however two particular sessions which were of particular interest to paraplanners; the first was the session by our own Richard Allum on assessing risk and the role of cashflows. This was extremely well attended and not just by paraplanners. Richard eloquently discussed the FSA assessing suitability paper and gave us all an understanding of the importance of using an appropriate risk profiling tool along with the necessity to increase your understanding of not just a client’s risk profile but also their capacity for loss.

He then linked this to lifetime cashflow planning, showing how the two are intrinsically linked and complement each other when looking to create an investment strategy to help clients to achieve their goals.

The second were the ‘Bridge the Gap’ sessions held during the lunch break and at the end of the second day. There were a number of these sessions one of which was ‘Paraplanning’. They were small groups which were in an open forum where the attendees could ask questions or advice or gain ideas from the Chairperson and Expert Panel.  

The Paraplanning session was chaired by Keri Carter (Broadway Financial Planning) and the panel comprised Gemma Davies (Bluefin), Damian Davies (the Timebank) and myself. The discussions were very open and constructive and included topics such as paraplanner career progression, outsourcing paraplanning and working effectively with Planners.

Both sessions were a great opportunity to talk to other paraplanners and most importantly to share ideas and hear how other people manage their roles and add value to the Planners they work with.

Paraplanning is considered an important role in a Financial Planning practice and the IFP are continuing to show their commitment to this belief by their support of the role at their conference each year.