A day in the life of a paraplanner
Our paraplanners are the backbone of our business. While your adviser is helping you map out your aspirations and aligning your financial goals, our paraplanners are working in the background to pull together all the technical aspects of your financial plan. We asked Thusha Thurairatam, one of our paraplanners, what a day in the life looks like for her. Thusha joined the business through our Learning for Life scheme, which you can learn more about here. Here’s what Thusha had to say.
How does a typical day in the office start?
A typical day for me begins with looking at all the allocated paraplanning work and arranging briefings with the relevant adviser if it’s needed. I start by prioritising my workload and mapping out my meetings for the day. Most often I find myself with lots of suitability letters and policy questionnaires to work through.
Tell us a bit about your responsibilities.
As a paraplanner I am responsible for working on full financial plans, preparing reports where necessary, writing suitability letters, and carrying out complex calculations where needed. The reports my team and I produce outline why a piece of advice is being made. The advisers are able to navigate the meeting by going through the detailed reports to cover off the extensive analysis that has gone on in the background – every recommendation is highly considered and explored before being presented.
What’s your most used phrase in the office?
Currently it’s “lifetime allowance”, due to the recent changes in legislation. We’ve also all been speculating about what future changes could happen with our new government – we’re not psychic though so we will have to wait and see!
Hypothetical scenario: mid-afternoon, an urgent task falls in your lap. What is it most likely to be?
Most likely is a Capital Gains Tax (CGT) calculation for a client who is wanting to take funds out. If it’s not that, it’s likely to be a suitability letter for a pension transfer.
What's the best part of your job?
I really enjoy being able to solve technical calculations which can then help clients make financial decisions which would impact their lives, both present and future. Providing the advisers with reports that I know are thorough and accurate makes me feel good and is the marker of a job well done for me.
What do you enjoy most about working at Wealth Matters?
Working at Wealth Matters, every day is different and I get to deal with a wide range of clients and client situations. It keeps me on my toes and wanting to be up to date with current financial rules, in order to give the most effective reports to the advisers to present to our clients.
