Raymond James debuts Paraplanning Services for advisors
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Raymond James today announced the launch of its new Paraplanning Services for financial advisors. This on-demand, in-house offering is designed to help advisors grow their business by further incorporating financial planning into their practice, according to Frank McAleer, senior vice president, Wealth Planning.
Experienced paraplanning professionals, based at the Raymond James St. Petersburg, Florida home office, are trained to virtually support advisors as they leverage the firm’s Goal Planning & Monitoring (GPM) software tool to create comprehensive financial plans for their clients.
“Raymond James was founded on the belief that clients deserve advice that considers their entire financial picture, and that principle is still at our core today. Paraplanning Services are designed to help advisors more efficiently leverage and scale our robust planning capabilities,” said McAleer.
Two engagement options for Paraplanning Services are available to meet a range of financial planning needs and objectives. Hourly services offer advisors the ability to transfer client financial plans held in another software or tool and recreate them within GPM, or to enter new client and prospect data. Comprehensive services allow advisors to engage a paraplanner to either build a new GPM plan or perform an in-depth analysis of an existing plan, with the option to co-present the plan or findings to the client.
“Paraplanning Services creates capacity for advisors to focus on holistic financial planning for their clients at various phases of their business. Transitioning advisors can take advantage of the hourly option to seamlessly move current financial plans from their previous system, for example” said Lindsay Noah, director of Paraplanning. “For advisors who already have planning ingrained in their practice, they can leverage comprehensive services to deepen their relationships with existing clients or to garner new business by showcasing the capability.”
Following a successful pilot and launch, financial advisors shared their feedback on the value of paraplanning for their practice and clients:
“The senior paraplanner exceeded my expectations in their demeanor and the way they went through the plan. They know the material, the different areas of the plan, goals, objectives and how to categorize income sources. More importantly, they know how to change them on the fly,” said Scott Anderson, financial advisor.
“When I decided to uproot my book of business from my previous firm, whose financial planning software was proprietary, I had a lot of financial plans I needed to build out fast. Starting somewhat from scratch to build back what took me as an advisor years to build was a daunting task to say the least. However, thanks to a paraplanner, all the GPM plans were built out and I was able to make all the presentations in less than six months. Moving forward, I plan on incorporating the paraplanning team in building out financial plans for all our onboarding prospects,” said Jason Gould, financial advisor.
“The paraplanner did the most eloquent, complete, concise, thorough and professional presentation yesterday with husband and wife clients with nearly $3 million in assets. This helped solidify the relationship and could potentially help bring in some assets from family members,” said Terry Marti, financial advisor.
Paraplanning Services are available to advisors within Raymond James Financial Services, the firm’s independent contractor affiliation.
About Raymond James Financial Services
Raymond James Financial Services, Inc. (RJFS), member FINRA/SIPC, is a financial services firm supporting independent financial advisors nationwide. Since 1974, RJFS provides a wide range of investment and wealth planning-related services through its affiliate, Raymond James & Associates, Inc., member New York Stock Exchange/SIPC. Both firms are wholly owned subsidiaries of Raymond James Financial, Inc. (NYSE-RJF), one of the nation’s premier diversified financial services companies with approximately 8,700 financial advisors throughout the United States, Canada and overseas. Total client assets are approximately $1.37 trillion as of Dec. 31, 2023. Additional information is available at raymondjames.com.