About Us, Our Clients and Our People

Berkshire IFA is an ambitious and growing company committed to our Clients, the outcomes they are seeking, and to our team of people who will help our clients achieve what they set out to. We support all of our team in their own journey both professionally and on a more personal level. We do this by supporting all training and development and offering package of benefits designed to look after our people’s health and well-being. To this end although we are quite a young company some of our people have been around for a while, and some have over 20 years' experience in the Financial Planning industry!

We specialise in retirement, pensions and intergenerational family wealth planning for a diverse spread of Clients. Regardless of background our mission is to give all our client's financial security by offering high levels of service and giving our clients solutions to the financial and personal outcomes they are seeking. At the core of this is our aim to know our clients in a way that goes beyond just the financial advice. In practice, this objective means when they pick up the phone to us, we already have a broad view of what they may be about to ask!

The Role

Summary

Paraplanners at Berkshire IFA are responsible for developing financial solutions that fulfil the outcomes our clients are seeking. Working in collaboration with the Financial Planning Team to prepare recommendations and produce suitability reports focusing on the needs of the client, consumer duty principles as set out by the FCA and company policies. This includes but isn’t limited to maintaining full client records, data gathering, and application form preparation and submission. The role will involves promoting the company’s services in a professional and FCA compliant manner.

Core Duties, Experience and Responsibilities:

• 4-5 years Paraplanning experience you will have the vision and ability to write two multi-pension and investment suitability reports per week, or 5 simple suitability or review reports per week, for our HNW Clients.
• Familiar with core Consumer duty principles, and able to put them at the heart of everything we do at Berkshire IFA.
• Put the Client needs and out comes first in every situation, in a fully compliant manner.
• Lead the preparation of suitability reports for approval by the Financial Adviser, and prepare associated documentation as required. Work with the Administration Team ensure all information is available for a suitability report to be produced. This will include the pre-completion of documentation ready for clients to check and sign.
• Have at least Level 4 Diploma in Financial Planning or equivalent so able act as a knowledge bank for queries of a technical nature, and when the adviser isn’t available.
• Responsible for day-to-day Paraplanning tasks - identifying what’s required, where client cases have information missing or outstanding actions. Then working with the advisers and administrative team to obtain this information and subsequently writing a suitability report ready for adviser approval.
• Act as a Paraplanning mentor for less experienced team members - as they join Berkshire IFA. Adopt an inclusive and inspiring leadership style to help future team members identify any development areas they need to address to achieve their own career aspirations.
• Record any client communications (whether that communication is written, oral or electronic) including client related communications with third parties.
• Identify areas for financial planning and developing solutions suitable to meet the client’s needs and objectives. This will include the preparation of tax calculations where necessary.
• Willing to help out - You may at times be required to provide support with administrative functions, for example: new business processing, income matching, collating and providing management information and organising future planning meetings with Clients on behalf of the Financial Adviser.
• Where necessary you will liaise with product providers and other third parties to acquire any additional information that may be required in order to assess the client’s needs and to help formulate any recommendations made by the adviser.
• Client Contact - On occasion it may be necessary to deal with technical or general queries from clients.
• Continuous Personal Development - All of our team must commit to keeping their knowledge up to date.

Essential Education, Qualifications & Training

• Level 4+ Financial services qualifications, RO exams are preferable.

Location: Winnersh Triangle, Reading. The role is currently 100% office based.

Our offices are open from 8am to 5:30pm to allow for flexible working hours.

Hours of Work:

Full time - 37.5 hours per week or Part time - 20, 25 or 30 hours per week are available.

Salary:

Range from £45,000 to £50,000 dependant on experience full time (pro-rata for part time)

Benefits

• 25 days per calendar year (plus Bank Holidays).
• Life Cover for everyone
• Income Protection - 66% of your salary
• Health, Optical and Dental Cover
• Cash Plan - To assist with policy excess amounts
• Flexible Hours - Everyone works their contracted hours per week, but these can be flexible across three shifts;
  
  • 8am and 4.30pm
  • 9am and 5.30pm
  • 9.30am and 6pm
  • All shifts have up to 1 hour for lunch. If you chose to, you could take 30 minutes instead of 1 hour for lunch and finish a little earlier
  • Part time Workers will work their hours within the shift patterns above. Either 20 hours, 25 hours or 30 hours per week are available.
• Paid Sick Leave - Up to 5 days per year at full pay.
• Long Service Annual Leave, an extra day every year after 5 years at Berkshire IFA have been completed, up to a maximum of 5 extra days annual leave.
• Upgrade in Maternity / Paternity / Shared Leave - At the moment we offer statutory. After 5 years’ service, we will offer 12 weeks of full pay, followed by statutory up to the end of week 39.