Raymond James ramps up advisor support with paraplanning service

The firm is rolling out two options for advisors who need help building financial plans.

Raymond James has taken a significant step forward in supporting advisors’ ability to deliver comprehensive planning with the addition of a new service. Through its new paraplanning services offering, the firm is providing on-demand, in-house support from experienced paraplanning professionals, enabling them to further integrate financial planning into their practice.

The service, which is based out of Raymond James’ St. Petersburg, Florida, headquarters, is designed to assist advisors in leveraging the firm’s goal planning and monitoring software tool to create detailed financial plans for 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,” Frank McAleer, senior vice president of wealth planning at Raymond James, said in a statement. “Paraplanning Services are designed to help advisors more efficiently leverage and scale our robust planning capabilities.”

To accommodate various financial planning needs and objectives, Raymond James is offering two levels of engagement through its paraplanning services. Advisors can opt for hourly services, which include the ability to transfer client financial plans from other software or tools into the goal planning and monitoring tool, or to input new client and prospect data.

Under the comprehensive service option, advisors can collaborate with a paraplanner to build a new plan or analyze an existing plan. Paraplanners may also co-present the plan or findings directly to clients under this option.

“Paraplanning Services creates capacity for advisors to focus on holistic financial planning for their clients at various phases of their business,” said Lindsay Noah, director of paraplanning at Raymond James.

The Raymond James announcement reflects a broader trend of enhancing advisors’ capabilities and efficiencies through specialized support services.

In April 2022, LPL Financial announced its own paraplanning service for advisors. Under that service, LPL paraplanners support advisors by performing data entry into financial planning software – such as eMoney, WealthVision, MoneyGuidePro and Right Capital – leading to insights and financial plans advisors can provide to their clients.

Later in 2022, LPL also announced a private client service network, which lets advisors access “a carefully curated register of companies that can provide help to serve the sophisticated and complex needs of their high-net-worth clients,” and a bookkeeping service that matches advisors with industry-trained bookkeepers who appreciate the unique needs of their business.