Case Study
CFL Financial Planning is a privately-owned and operated financial planning company based in Queensland, Australia. With over 20 years of experience serving clients, CFL strives to deliver critical insight and assurance, combined with the empowerment that is only possible from informed, educated decisions about financial matters.
While they were able to help their clients achieve financial stability, CFL struggled with their own challenges, most importantly around staffing security and team stability.
While CFL Financial’s core team of experts has always been up to the task of providing outstanding services, that was not the case with the company’s support and administrative staff. In fact, maintaining employees for the long-term felt like a struggle. Steve King from CFL noted that “The positions for Paraplanning and general admin were always a revolving door. We kept having people come in, we’d train them, and then they would leave.”
When a company cannot count on having key team members in the office on a regular basis, it becomes impossible to focus on the future. When one employee would leave, it would create chaos while others scrambled to take over those responsibilities and the company tried to find a replacement. When that occurs time and time again, it fosters a sense of instability, frustration, and anxiety that bleeds through into dealings with clients.
Paraplanning might be a junior role on a financial planning team, but due to the need to conduct in-depth, accurate research, organize financial reports, and source financial records from clients, it is imperative that the individual has experience and knowledge in the financial planning world. Valenta was able to provide CFL with access to an experienced team who possess the necessary knowledge and training for Paraplanning services; additionally, these team members seamlessly integrated with the CFL team even in a remote role.
Ultimately, CFL Financial opted to outsource their Paraplanning needs, as well as their administration staffing, needs to Valenta. By outsourcing key in-office positions, CFL ensured they were able to fill open positions with skilled, highly-trained professionals with in-depth experience.
This allowed CFL to ensure they had skilled team members in key areas, but also the assurance that those team members would not leave to pursue other opportunities. CFL has been working with Valenta for two years and is even now expanding their outsourcing needs to take advantage of the benefits and advantages offered.
With Valenta’s outsourced staff in key positions, CFL was poised to achieve significant benefits. Chief among them was the chance to stop the revolving door that had been their usual hiring and training process. This created a ripple effect that spread across the entire company. Staffing security delivered stability for the rest of the team and allowed them to focus on their core capabilities. By ensuring that Paraplanning and administrative support team members were there for the long-haul, CFL’s team could provide even better customer service, offer more in-depth financial planning, and better fulfill their key mission, which is to help their customers.
Additionally, the company achieved additional benefits in that it allowed them to save not just time and effort, but also money, which is a critical consideration for a business that needs to remain agile, but that is no longer experiencing the significant growth that young firms often do. “It really improved our savings and our bottom line,” Steve explained. “We are a mature business and not growing at a great rate. What we spend offshore for support is very small. It’s tiny.”
The advantages also lay in reducing the company’s long-term costs. “If we outsourced … then we wouldn’t have a permanent employee that was on the books for sick leave and annual leave. To have somebody trained in that role and it’s not our responsibility anymore, that was a great benefit,” Steve summed up.
The result of working with Valenta has been significant for CFL Financial. Outsourcing in-office needs has made the company significantly more efficient, while also enabling them to deliver better service to their existing client base. When combined with the enhanced staffing security and improved stability across the entire organization, it’s a win-win solution that empowers both CFL Financial Planning and the firm’s clients.
