"Can you do a report for the Hendersons?"
That is often the whole brief. The adviser has had a long meeting, knows exactly what the clients want and what they discussed, and sends a short email to the paraplanner before rushing to the next appointment. The paraplanner opens the file, reads the fact find and starts to piece it together.
Then the questions begin. Did the clients want to keep the old pension or was that still open? Is the income target net or gross? Was the ISA top up agreed or just mentioned? Each question is another email to an adviser who is in meetings all day. The case sits waiting for answers.
Why the handover is so thin
Advisers are not being careless. They carry the context in their heads and it feels obvious to them. Writing it all down takes time they do not have between meetings, and there is no prompt telling them what the paraplanner will need for this type of case.
Paraplanners, meanwhile, work across several advisers, each with their own habits. Some write detailed notes, some send a line. With no standard format, every case starts with detective work.
- No agreed brief format for each type of case.
- Context lives in the adviser's memory or handwritten notes.
- Handovers come by email, Teams message and in passing.
- No shared queue, so paraplanners juggle requests from several inboxes.
- Cases with open questions look the same as cases ready to start.
The cost of each round of questions
| Handover gap | Effect on the case |
|---|---|
| Objective not stated clearly | Research starts in the wrong direction |
| Constraint not mentioned | Report drafted, then rewritten |
| Existing plans not confirmed | Paraplanner waits or guesses |
| Priority not given | Urgent case sits behind routine ones |
| Agreed actions unclear | Client receives a report that misses a point |
Each round of questions adds days. Paraplanners context switch between half-started cases. And advisers get frustrated that reports take so long, without seeing that the delay started with the handover.
A structured brief and a shared queue
- We sit with your advisers and paraplanners and agree what a complete brief looks like for each case type: pension consolidation, new investment, retirement income, protection and so on.
- Each case type gets a short brief form with the questions the paraplanner always ends up asking, marked as required.
- The form pre-fills client details, holdings and objectives from the fact find in Intelliflo Office, Xplan, Curo or your own system, so the adviser only adds what came out of the meeting.
- Advisers can dictate into the form on their phone after the meeting. Where your firm wants it, speech is transcribed for the adviser to check before sending.
- Submitted briefs land in a shared paraplanning queue, with priority and requested date.
- A paraplanner can mark a question back to the adviser from inside the case, and the case shows as waiting on adviser until it is answered.
- The queue shows who is working on what, what is waiting and what is overdue.
The brief records what the adviser decided. It does not suggest recommendations. The judgement stays with the adviser.
How paraplanning feels afterwards
Paraplanners start cases with what they need, so research heads in the right direction first time. Questions still happen, but they are tracked in the case rather than scattered through inboxes. Advisers spend a few minutes after each meeting instead of fielding questions for days. And the firm can see its paraplanning workload and where cases are waiting.
New paraplanners, including outsourced ones, pick up the firm's way of working faster, because the brief format tells them what matters.
Is this happening in your firm?
- Briefs arrive as one line emails.
- Paraplanners send several question rounds per case.
- Handovers come through different channels.
- Nobody can see the full paraplanning queue.
- Reports get rewritten because a constraint was missed.