Diary of an adviser: Peter Chadborn

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Diary of an adviser: Peter Chadborn

This week ...

Monday

Monday morning starts as always with an adviser team meeting. We use this period to debate important industry issues, Plan Money’s development areas, and for advisers to invite input on client cases. 

Our paraplanner and compliance manager regularly participate in the discussions. Their input has particularly been useful this week as I discuss a case where a client’s requirement means giving up the guaranteed minimum pensions entitlement in one of their pensions. 

We also use this time to host providers, and this week we have a visit from AJ Bell. We are using its platform more and so familiarity with systems and processes is important for the whole team.

I close the day with a meeting with a group of business owners from 10 hand-picked, Colchester-based businesses. We discuss how General Data Protection Regulation is going to affect different organisations and how we can share best practice. We also plan a collective client event at an Essex Twenty20 cricket match later in the year.

Tuesday

My preferred start time is 7:30am, which is not too much of a chore as I only live four miles from the office. It’s a good time to get my head into cases that need uninterrupted focus. 

Today I will make the easiest decision I will make all week – probably all year. Our CIExpert user licence is up for renewal and how any adviser can give critical illness advice without using this software is beyond me.

The focus of today is a business owner client who needs to understand the various options for extracting profit from his cash-rich business as he phases into retirement over the next five years.

The evening is my under-16s football training. My son plays for the team, which I have been managing since they were part of the under-11s, but this will be my last season. We’re looking good for a high league position.

Wednesday

More end-of-tax-year requests come through today. I deliberately do not schedule any annual client reviews for March because many of my client’s circumstances dictate that their planning needs to take place at the end of the tax year. This means that ad-hoc pension and Isa contributions need a swift turnaround.

Thankfully we have a very good support team to help meet the deadlines.

Thursday

My business partner Peter Wright walks me through some recent enhancements to CashCalc, the cash flow software. It’s a very effective planning tool, which now underpins so much of what we do. He also talks me through some Intelligent Office developments, which I’m less excited about. Thankfully customer relationship management is his department.

My colleague David Vaughan announces that he has achieved the lofty status of Fellow of the Personal Finance Society. He is our go-to source for all manner of technical detail and it is fitting that he has reached this level in his career.

I get away at a reasonable time to fit in a session on my indoor bike smart turbo trainer. It’s a reasonable substitute for the real thing and I need to get the training in because the year’s first big ride is to Amsterdam and it’s not that long away.

Friday

The week ends beautifully with a reminder of why we do what we do. My colleague Kay Fisher recently visited new clients who had a mixed bag of pensions, investments and insurance policies and wanted to make sense of it all.

During the initial meeting she found out the male client had prostate cancer five years ago but had not claimed on his Old Mutual critical illness policy because, having recovered from the cancer, he did not think he was ill enough. He was recommended to put in a claim and today the client informed Kay that Old Mutual had accepted it and a cheque had arrived for £34,500.

This action required very little work on our part, but in its simplicity the guidance served as a powerful reminder that we never know what we will find and what value we can add to people’s lives until we roll our sleeves up and start digging.

Peter Chadborn is a director and adviser at Colchester-based Plan Money