A Financial Planning firm has brought a new Paraplanner on board and is looking at increasing its Paraplanning team to as many as eight by the end of 2016.

Cooper Parry Wealth, which won the IFP Accredited Financial Planning Firm of the Year award last year, is considering recruiting another two Paraplanners this year.

Last September, Cooper Parry launched a joint venture with Kent-based accountancy firm Creaseys called Creaseys Wealth and the new firm has just hired its first Paraplanner. This brings Cooper Parry’s Paraplanner team to six in total.

Former Maze Wealth Paraplanner Sharon Evans has joined to support Financial Planner Ben Waite, who moved from Lloyds Private Bank to lead the venture.

Stephen Jones, chief executive of Cooper Parry Wealth, said the company will soon be looking for a seventh member of the Paraplanning team and might add an eighth before the end of the year.

There has been much discussion over the past year about a lack of suitable Paraplanning candidates to fill roles as demand increases for their services.

Nicola Watts, director of Jane Smith Financial Planning, recently told Financial Planning Today, she had found many of the candidates she interviewed for a Paraplanner position lacked certain attributes. Many failed to “hit the mark technically” and were unable to apply knowledge to a real life scenario, she said.

Asked if these experiences were familiar to Cooper Parry when recruiting, Mr Jones said: “We look for good quality people and finding experienced people to hit the ground running is tough.

“We always find it difficult to find good Paraplanners who are a good fit personally with our values. A lot of people call themselves Paraplanners but they don’t do proper Financial Planning and we always want people who are client facing as ours attend the meetings.”

Although there has not been “a massive change” in the way Paraplanners work at his firm, Mr Jones said the role had perhaps changed a little as they have become increasingly client facing, while a couple have become Financial Planners.

Mr Jones signalled that prospects were good for the company this year and said: “It’s going well at the moment, we’ve trebled revenue in the last few years and we’re growing very quickly.”