Written by Kelly Biggar, head of our Financial Planning desk.

We have experienced significant demand for qualified paraplanners in the last year or so, and many of these roles have been for career paraplanners. However, we have found a general perception amongst candidates that financial planning is a more desirable career route, and many candidates are using paraplanning as a stepping stone to becoming a Financial Advisor. Whilst there is nothing wrong with this, it does seem to me that paraplanning is a career path that is suffering from a lack of recognition.

Careeer paraplanners can be highly qualified, technical and knowledgeable, can be client facing and give recommendations, and yet the buck stops with the advisors. Paraplanners can earn a basic salary of up to £50k, and there are potential moves into team management. They often find themselves in high demand throughout their career (as we well know – paraplanning roles are not easy to recruit for!), and are highly valued members of the financial planning team.

I feel that financial planning firms have a role to play in how they promote paraplanning jobs. These are highly skilled and important roles, and a stronger emphasis on this might make more candidates consider it as a long-term career. In many cases career paraplanners are disheartened because their roles aren’t client facing, and are too admin/report driven.

Generally paraplanning does not get the recognition it needs in the industry, and it is a vital part of the financial planning process.　A Financial Advisor’s job is to be in front of clients giving them advice, and like any highly regulated industry, in order to do that well you they need an excellent support network – time to give that network some credit!