First Rate PA Case Study - Peter Wild Wealth Management

About the client

Pete Wild has had a successful career spanning over 20 years within the financial services sector.  He specialises in the areas of: Investment, Pension, and Inheritance Tax planning.  He is a Chartered Financial Planner and a Partner Practice of St. James’s Place Wealth Management.

Pete runs his Wealth Management business with his wife Beccy, who is also a qualified Financial Advisor.  Pete and Beccy enjoy supporting local businesses and regularly attend networking events in their local area.  Having met on several occasions, Pete and Beccy decided they would get in touch with us at First Rate PA to find out how we could help them.

The admin team at Peter Wild Wealth Management consisted of two part-time administrators, with one working 2 days and the other 3 days a week.  Each administrator had their own focus area, with some cross over on tasks that were more time sensitive.

They were looking at employing a third administrator, but wanted to identify where the additional team member would fit in the team with the current admin tasks and procedures.

The task

Michelle met with Beccy Wild to discuss the task they were looking for help with.  Finding out more about the current set up within the office, Michelle suggested having a VA come into the office and shadow both administrators for two days.  This would enable them to assess their workloads, helping to identify the admin/marketing tasks the team undertook.

After the initial assessment, the VA would then produce a report to outline their findings, along with suggestions in how the office could run more efficiently and any new procedures that they would benefit from.  This would also help the team to produce an administration handbook/procedure manual for reference and future training.

How we solved the problem

During the assessment, our VA identified that the two admin staff both knew their jobs very well and were providing A-Star support to the practice.  They could both see areas where they could be more efficient, but it was clear that they were struggling with the amount of work in the time they shared.

With the help of the admin team, our VA identified areas that they could save time by changing their current procedures.  By having one person deal with certain tasks, this would save them a lot of time not having a hand over on days they were both in the office.  Also by having their own list of clients to manage, they would not have to duplicate work.

By moving away from a paper diary and introducing an electronic diary to the office, this would allow all the team to have access to reminders and new client meetings.  There was also an opportunity to move over to a more efficient CRM system, so that their emails and client data is all stored in one place.  This would make it easier for the whole team to access the information and conversations with each client.

There were also areas identified that would be better delegated to a third member of the team, this way they could concentrate on their own workloads knowing that the general day to day admin tasks were managed.  They would also benefit from this additional person being in the office every day, even if on a part-time basis.  This would help keep on top of all those daily tasks, freeing up the other team members to concentrate on their tasks.

The results

Our VA produced a detailed report for Pete and Beccy, highlighting the whole process from the initial brief, through to findings and suggestions.  They found having an external pair of eyes in the office, was helpful in identifying areas for improvement.

Our VA suggested some future options including: increasing the hours of one of the current team members to support her workload; By bringing in an additional administrator role for part-time across the 5 day week; or possibly looking into the opportunity of an apprentice so they can be trained up with the company procedures.

Review

Michelle was excellent, spending time with each of us individually and as a team to identify our working practises and areas of need for the future. We received our comprehensive report which identified the need for additional admin support and importantly the specific role this support would undertake in our practice. We immediately started recruiting, although this was delayed because of Covid we do now have an additional full time administrator helping us move forward.