‘Some of the better advisers have been paraplanners’

Speaking to FTAdviser, Davenport shared some of her wisdom from 40 years in financial services and explained why she believes paraplanners often make the best financial advisers. 

As a chartered financial planner, Davenport joined Kingswood Group as a paraplanner before becoming paraplanning manager for the Midlands region in May of last year. 

Looking back on her career to date, Davenport said she was doing the job of a paraplanner before the role had a name, having started report-writing in the mid-nineties. 

I’m not sure I can say this approaching 60, but you go to seminars and it is still predominantly old men

“In the late 80s I was working for an IFA within a firm of accountants, and I looked at all the accountants going off and doing their exams and I thought, I would like to do the CII exams,” Davenport said. 

“This was when it was all general insurance, it predates any of the financial services stuff by quite some way. So I went and spoke to the partners and said I would like to do these exams. 

“It was [a case of] ‘how much is this going to cost’ and I told them and they sort of fell off their chairs and said how many do you want to do because compared to what they paid for the accounting students it was a drop in the ocean,” Davenport said. 

Davenport drew a comparison between financial planning, law practitioners and accountants and said in her view, those in advice and planning need to think of themselves as more of a profession than an industry, similar to law and accountancy. 

“Financial advisers like to see themselves as being the third arm along with solicitors and accountants. There’s not a law industry, there’s not an accountancy industry, so therefore if we want to see ourselves as their equals it’s got to be a profession. 

I tried advising many years ago and put the anorak back on and stood back in the office. It didn’t suit me.

“That’s why I was so glad when RDR came in and introduced the need for qualifications,” Davenport added.

Davenport, who has been a chartered insurance practitioner since 1991, also holds a law degree which she obtained in 2013 while studying part-time as a mature student.

Although she has dabbled in advising herself, Davenport quickly decided it was not for her and chose to stick with paraplanning.

“I tried advising many years ago. It didn’t suit me. Because I’m quite technical I wanted to explain the ins and outs of say, a pension plan to a client and they would sort of glaze over and say well is it going to give me some money when I retire?,” Davenport said. 

Despite deciding that advice wasn’t for her, Davenport believes that using paraplanning as a route into an adviser role is a good path for new entrants to take. 

Last year, research from Quilter showed that female paraplanners are much less likely to become advisers than their male counterparts, despite most having, or in the process of getting, adviser qualifications. 

Just 6 per cent of female advisers said they would like to go on to become a financial adviser. This compared to 41 per cent of men. 

“That is something I see across the board, but I’m not sure that it’s representative of paraplanners. I think it is representative of the adviser population, which is predominantly male,” Davenport said. 

“I’m not sure I can say this approaching 60, but you go to seminars and it is still predominantly old men.

“My experience among the Kingswood midland region is there is a mix of male and female paraplanners and I’ve got two coming up the admin team that want to come into paraplanning as a springboard into advising and I think that is a very, very good way [to do it]. Certainly some of our better advisers have done that. 

“Apart from anything else, it gives them the knowledge and experience. You can read a book but there's nothing like doing it and I think if people have done the admin job they’ve got more empathy with what is actually involved and required. 

“If they’ve done the paraplanning job they know what they expect an adviser to give them so hopefully they remember all of that and give us all of that information in the first place,” Davenport said. 

In her opinion, the top qualities that are needed for a paraplanner to succeed in the profession are “attention to detail, good time-management, and just a desire to keep learning basically.”

“I don’t expect anybody, adviser or paraplanner to know all of the answers, what I do expect both paraplanners and advisers to know is there is a question. That you then go ‘hang on, that rings a bell, I need to check that out’. 

She added: “Because the risk of bad advice isn’t from the people that don’t know the answer, it’s the people who don’t know there’s a question.”

jane.matthews@ft.com