Forum Discussion

Tamara.Morey's avatar
Tamara.Morey
Icon for Advisely Partner rankAdvisely Partner
12 months ago

The struggle for adviser capacity

These days, we see advisers doing more administration work than we saw 5 or 10 years ago.  Research, plan requests and even application forms are unnecessarily taking up their time and stifling capacity.  

And this is not simply due to more compliance. 

So what's driving the hesitation to hand-over to a support role?  

Is it finding the right support?
A lack of trust?  
Or something else?

  • deborah.kent's avatar
    deborah.kent
    Icon for Advisely Index Top 10 rankAdvisely Index Top 10

    Hi Tamara we happily oursource our paraplanning but to be honest outsourcing admin is something that I am not confident about and our staff feel the same way especially with off shore.  It is something that is a conversation topic of ours especially with the extra work around OFAs

    • Tamara.Morey's avatar
      Tamara.Morey
      Icon for Advisely Partner rankAdvisely Partner

      Hi Deb, I think the beauty of a virtual office like yours is that you've opened yourself up to many options for support.  Improving adviser capacity doesn't have to mean outsourcing, if that model doesn't work for you.  Your 'support' could be a permanent team member you employ directly (or as a contractor paid per task), based anywhere in Australia.  The candidate pool is multiplied when you are no longer limited to your immediate location.

  • justin.grima's avatar
    justin.grima
    Visiting Enthusiast

    Something I see often is advisers who either don't have the confidence in the abilities of their support staff or they feel that it would take longer to explain what needs to be done than to just do it themselves. It's a tough one and really shows the value of having members of your support team who you have worked with for some time and who understand your operating rhythm

  • Interesting that you are finding that Tamara.Morey I guess increased compliance regimes has something to do with the changes.  In our practice, we are always talking about ensuring that the "surgeons are doing surgery" so ensuring that advisers are seeing and talking to clients, creating strategies and ensuring we are growing as a business, our paraplanners, whether in-house or outsourced are doing just that, creating the plans and our admin team are looking after the admin. 
    Of course there are always some admin jobs we have to do as advisers, like checking advice docs, or following up if things are not getting done, but I would be confident that 80% of what we do is working with our clients not doing admin, we don't have enough time in our day to do the admin as well.