With the new financial year around the corner, every practice I speak to is running the numbers. Client fees, wages, software subscriptions and yes, the paraplanning line item. Timelines have already blown out across the industry and advisers are asking the same question: can we get this done cheaper?
It is a fair question. It’s also the wrong one.
In my 15+ years in the industry and running an outsourced paraplanning team that works across 100+ practices, I’ve watched advisers switch models chasing a lower rate and then switch back six months later. The per-plan cost dropped on paper. The actual cost of running the practice went up.
There are three main models practices use for paraplanning: in-house, offshore, and on-shore outsourced. Each has a legitimate place and this isn’t a pitch for one over the others. It’s a pitch for understanding the true cost of whichever one you pick.
In-house
The upfront appeal is total control. Your paraplanner is in the office, they know your clients, they adjust to your style and they’re there whenever you need to check or change something.
But salary is only the beginning of their cost. Add super, leave, training, software licenses, a desk and the recruitment cost when they leave. A quality paraplanner in Australia is not a cheap hire and the talent pool is shrinking. Capacity is also fixed; if your volume doubles in a quarter, one person can’t double with it, and if it halves, you’re still paying the same.
Key person risk is real. When your paraplanner is sick, on extended leave or resigns, the files stop moving. Training and upskilling falls on the practice and with regulatory change as constant as it is, that’s a genuine ongoing cost. And if you don’t offer career progression, someone else will.
None of this is a reason not to hire in-house as many practices run this model beautifully. But the true cost is often 1.3 to 1.5 times the salary once everything is factored in and the output is capped by one person’s availability.
Offshore
The upfront appeal is the rate which on paper is significantly lower per plan. For practices under fee pressure, the math looks obvious.
Australian compliance is specific and constantly shifting. Offshore teams vary hugely in how well they keep up and the ones that do keep up, aren’t always priced as low as you’d expect. Time zones, language nuance and context gaps mean more adviser/practice time spent clarifying, checking and reworking. That adviser time has a real hourly cost that almost no one tracks.
Privacy and data handling is a conversation you need to have properly and your licensee may have a firm view on it. Turnover on offshore teams can also be high, which means the person who finally learned your practice is gone and the next one starts at zero.
Offshore can work well for high-volume, highly templated work where the brief is tight, the review process is robust and compliance risk is low. It’s less forgiving for complex or non-standard advice where judgment and interpretation matter.
On-Shore outsourced
To be completely transparent, this is what my business - TNT Group- does. So I’ll try to be unbiased about where it doesn’t work.
The upfront appeal is flexibility, no fixed headcount cost and access to people with local compliance knowledge. Work flexes up in the busy months and down when it needs to, without an employment commitment.
But not all providers are equal. Some genuinely add strategic value whilst others are glorified data entry at a premium price. Handover friction with the wrong outsource provider can be significant. If their process demands you change how you work, you pay for it in adviser time with every single file. And, if the outsourcer is small, you’ve essentially shifted key person risk to someone else’s employee.
Turnaround times stretch in peak seasons unless the provider has real capacity behind them. Anyone can quote a five-day turnaround in February. A lot fewer can still hit it in May and June.
The cost you’re not measuring
Here’s what every model has in common. The cost of a plan is not the invoice. The cost of a plan is the invoice plus:
- Adviser time spent clarifying incomplete briefs or reviewing rework
- Compliance exposure when something slips through
- Delayed advice fees when the file sits for four weeks instead of ten days
- Client frustration, which you can’t put a number on until they leave
- Opportunity cost - every hour an adviser spends fixing a plan is an hour they aren’t in front of a new client.
A $600 plan that needs three hours of adviser review, a compliance rework and lands two weeks late is not a $600 plan. Run those numbers at your adviser hourly rate and the picture changes quickly.
A better question for FY26 planning
Instead of “what’s the cheapest option,” try: “what does a compliant, audit-ready, presentation-ready plan actually cost me, all-in, under each model?”
Track it honestly for a quarter. Rework hours, clarification emails, turnaround times, adviser review time, client complaints. Whichever model wins on that measure is the one worth paying for, whether it’s the cheapest per-plan rate or not. Cheap paraplanning isn’t cheap. Good paraplanning, under the right model for your practice, almost always is.
Dela Dzadey is Director & Advice Manager at TNT Group
