Industry insight
The Paraplanner Bottleneck: Scaling Advice Without the £35k Hire
Jon Livsey · · 4 min read
Somewhere past eighty ongoing clients, most solo advisers have the same evening: a half-written suitability report on one screen and paraplanner job adverts on the other. Before you commit to a £35,000-a-year fix, be precise about which problem you're hiring for. In my experience, most of what drives that search is a drafting backlog, and a salary is the most expensive way to clear one.
I say that as someone who thinks good paraplanners are worth every penny. The question is whether the job you need doing is the job they're actually good at.
What the hire really costs
UK paraplanner salaries broadly sit in the £35,000 to £50,000 range depending on experience and region. Add employer National Insurance, pension contributions, software licences, kit and holiday cover, and it's realistic to put another 20 to 30 per cent on top.
Then there are the costs no invoice shows. Good paraplanners are scarce and they know it, so expect months to recruit and more months for them to learn your templates, your standards and your clients. And managing a person is work in itself, which nobody tells the adviser who has spent fifteen years managing only their own diary.
None of that is an argument against hiring. It's an argument for knowing what you're buying. A proper paraplanner brings research, analysis, and someone who will look at your recommendation and say "are you sure?". If that's what you need, the money is well spent.
The options side by side
Outsourced paraplanning. Pay per case, no fixed overhead, flexes with your volume. The trade-offs are real, though: you still assemble the file and write a brief for every case, turnaround is measured in days, quality depends on who picks up your work, and a relationship with one reliable outsourcer takes time to build.
An AI-assisted workflow. Software reads the client file you already hold, extracts the data, and produces a first draft of the notes and the letter. You review, correct and approve. It's the cheapest option in cash and the fastest to a draft. It also does no research and exercises no judgement, and you should distrust any product that claims otherwise. What it removes is the retrieval, the re-keying and the blank page.
| Full-time paraplanner | Outsourced per case | AI-assisted workflow | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cash cost | £35k–£50k plus on-costs | Per-case fee, scales with volume | Monthly subscription |
| Speed to a first draft | Days, once they're up to speed | Typically days per case | Minutes |
| Research and judgement | Yes — the real value | Some; varies by provider | None; you remain the reviewer |
| Your prep per case | Delegate, then manage | Assemble the file, write the brief | Upload the file, check the extraction |
| Responsibility for the advice | Yours | Yours | Yours |
| Best when | Complex cases at volume | Lumpy or seasonal demand | The backlog is drafting, not analysis |
Read the responsibility row twice. It's the same in all three columns. Whoever, or whatever, produces the draft, the advice is yours, and the FCA will address its questions to you.
When hiring is the right answer
Hiring wins, clearly, in some situations:
You have a steady flow of genuinely complex cases that need research, modelling and technical analysis, not just write-up. You're building towards a second adviser and want capacity that compounds as the firm grows. You want someone who will challenge your thinking rather than just produce documents. Or, honestly, you'd rather delegate the whole function than review drafts yourself.
If two or more of those are true, hire, or build a long-term relationship with an excellent outsourcer. Software will not argue with you about a client's capital gains position. A good paraplanner will, and sometimes that argument is worth the salary on its own.
The question that decides it
Are you buying judgement, or are you buying drafting?
If it's judgement, buy a person. If it's drafting, a person is a very expensive way to get it, and most of the paraplanner job adverts I read are, line by line, describing drafting: write up the meeting, populate the template, produce the report, chase the sign-off.
Work out which backlog you actually have before the recruiter's fee lands. The £35,000 question deserves at least that much analysis, which is more than most of us give it at 9pm on a Tuesday with a report still open.
If the honest answer in your firm is drafting, that's the job Suitable does — have a look at getsuitable.co.uk and book a demo.