TomLloyd_Read
Hi Stacey
The lady that co-ordinates the Qualification Mentoring Scheme is Gemma Warren - Gemma.Warren@cii.co.uk.
Good luck!
Tom
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Comments
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For more junior paraplanners, we ask them to do a technical test and also give them an article to summarise in a technical bulletin email for advisers. I tend to try and find relatively long technical piece from Prudential/Standard Life etc and ask…
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Bit tricky now I think. Most of the schemes simply invest in the old single company structures e.g. Great Point Media (Illium), Puma EPS (Heritage), Triplepoint (Generations, Navigator). Whether these can be accessed outside of the discretionary str…
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All taxes built in are the biggest must. Planning tools e.g. Voyant's Insights and I am rather fond of Voyant's Monte Carlo simulation. That, along with the historic function, appear to be the only ways to model variable investment returns. The M…
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Again, depends on the firm. Generally speaking, as the fee earners they will be entitled to bonus but the metrics for deciding this will be very different in each firm.
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For admin and paraplanning staff, it all depends and each firm will have their own take on it, much like any other industry. I've tended to work for firms that have paid a bonus, although it has varied from purely discretionary to a structured annua…
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Totally agree, I did J10 and AF4 but stupidly didn't do J12 and rather regret this, particularly as it was three years ago and I'd need to get my study head back on...
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I like the Monte Carlo tool for stress testing comparison plans e.g. DB transfer or not, gift £X or not. I think this is really useful when a client is making irrevocable decisions. The quick life assurance and income protection tools are good, as i…
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I trialed it and thought it was really very good. Some areas are equivalent or better than Voyant, particularly explaining what the charts are showing. I did find it a bit fiddly in parts but I suspect this is more to do with my familiarity with Voy…
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I think it is a no brainer to do AF1 and JO2 together. In the RO papers, trusts are only dealt with very lightly and you will potentially need to know a great deal more for AF1. For example, my colleague took AF1 and the vast majority of it was t…
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We use these guys. They are based in Manchester (we are in London) but all contact is via phone and our clients have been happy with the service they have received. They've also been happy to provide CPD and updates to advisers in our office. htt…
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I'm not sure where you are based but the Insurance Institute of London have started a formal mentor group for Insurance and financial planning candidates. Not sure when the next group is due to start but my colleague is part of the first group and h…
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Hi Liam We went through a similar process a couple of years ago, and migrated from AO to IO. Admittedly, as a slightly larger company, with a larger parent company, we were given the resources to project manage this properly. We were able to go …
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I used Brand FT and Wizard Learning (two of us doing it so bought two "solutions"). Absolutely worth it and would recommended to anyone taking it. I reckon around 75% of the stuff in the solutions was covered in the exam.
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Surely any reasonable risk profiling questionnaire should cover tolerance for loss e.g. by how much could the total value of all your investments go down before you would begin to feel uncomfortable. We use FinaMetrica and this is one of the ques…
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We have some exposure in our portfolios. We have exposure to both infrastructure equity funds which perform much like a global equity fund, albeit typically with lower volatility and investment trusts, which look like more of a pure infrastructure p…
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We have continued to put business in Dublin for the same reasons as you Dan. From our discussions, we have decided there are too many uncertainties and so we are just going to carry on as usual until such time as this no longer makes sense. Funni…
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Has to go in the main report really. To my mind it is simply too fundamental to investment advice to be included in the appendix. On the wider point, I am fairly ambivalent. My preference currently (and it changes) is to include a summary of the …
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Was nice to see my quote in the article!
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No offence taken @arongunningham ! We charge VAT on most fees since we also use DFMs too. And basically do what @Suse1969 does. Our initial engagement says £X plus VAT where applicable.
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I have heard @arongunningham 's view a couple of times from other people. I have responsibility for this in my firm so am familiar with all the relevant sections in the VAT manual, and have met with VAT experts to discuss the subject (honestly, I di…
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"Two thirds of surveyed advisers say paraplanners free up their time to do more valuable activities". I found this interesting. Does it mean that a third of advisers feel writing reports, for instance, is a better use of their time than meeting c…
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Don't worry, got it, you can add charges manually. I just told my team this might be the best day in my life ever (but they can't tell my wife that...)
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Hi Nathan I was just looking for something similar this morning funnily enough! Have just checked this out- any idea what to do with portfolios that have holdings which do not have MIFID data? We use a few ETFs which don't seem to have MIFID data…
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Hi Jenni Looks like you have been looking at it too long! You are right in that the PSA is reduced to £500 and they have £3,000 of the starting rate band left. So the first £3,500 is taxed at 0%, the remaining £35,100 is taxed at 20%, £7,020. The…
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As an employer, we put 2nd stage paraplanners through a level 4, multiple choice test, which takes around 20 minutes, and then ask them to do a short technical note based on a topic of my choosing. Senior paraplanners miss out the technical note bu…
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We have used the TISA spreadsheet and built our models into it. Took some doing still but provides all the information you could want. As you'd expect, the RIY % and £ do not look exactly like the costs and charges part of the spreadsheet and this i…
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Hi Nath, in answer to the first bit, yes this is what we had been doing. In a number of cases we would have written to the client to explain why we would not recommend a transfer but this wouldn't have been a formal suitability letter. I think of…
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In our ex-ante disclosure, we currently do a detailed breakdown, but I am looking at changing this to a summary. In our ex post disclosure, we are definitely going to provide a summary (investments/advice costs, combined product costs, tax) but ca…