Personal Finance Awards: Paraplanner of the Year Award 2022-23

The Personal Finance Awards 2022 were announced during a ceremony at the Festival of Financial Planning at the Birmingham NEC at the beginning of November 2022.

We are pleased to announce that BRI employee Marlena Eltringham has won the ‘Paraplanner of the Year Award 2022-23’.

The Personal Finance Society (PFS) stated that “this award recognises the importance of paraplanning as part of a holistic professional financial planning process and celebrates excellence, superior ability and a commitment to high standards within this specialism”.

The award is based on a two-stage judging process designed to enable candidates to demonstrate the skills necessary to plan an integral part of the professional advisory process.

The first stage was an online submission where judges were looking for evidence of the entrants’ commitment to high standards, professionalism, and the Code of Ethics; evidence of how they maintain and develop their professional skills; evidence of passion for paraplanning and how they invest in the future for paraplanning.

During the second stage process, the shortlisted candidates were invited to complete a hypothetical case study related to their specialism. All case studies were independently authored and judged by technical specialists from Technical Connection.

This was the first ever professional awards  competition that Marlena has entered; and as she said, she didn’t know what to expect. She enjoyed working on the case study the most, although she received the case study during her holiday which meant she had to work on it in the evenings when her children were in bed. She started the case study with a little ‘brainstorm’ followed by in-depth research and by referring to the knowledge and experience she had gained over the years. She said that the award ceremony was a very special and emotional event, with many highlights.

This is a wonderful achievement and the culmination of many years of hard work and dedication to the profession.

Marlena is passionate about paraplanning and she believes that the award will raise not only her profile but also that of the company and will demonstrate our credibility and credentials. It also proves that it is not only the front-office people – that is, the advisors and management – who are highly qualified, but also the people behind them: the back-office people who provide all the necessary support to the advisors and their clients. It will help to build our clients’ confidence and trust even more.

Marlena joined BRI twelve years ago with diploma qualifications and has since then become a  Chartered Fellow of the Personal Finance Society. At BRI she is responsible for financial planning report writing and assessments, conducting extensive research, dealing with technical queries, and providing consultants/advisors with technical analysis.