Paragon Paraplanning is Martin Vaughan.

Martin has worked in Financial Services for the past 16 years; initially as a Financial Adviser he worked for a large insurance company and a high street bank. Approximately 8 years ago he made the move from bancassurance to working for an Independent Financial Adviser.

Here he used his experience as an Adviser to provide administrative, research and report writing support to the IFAs he worked with. This role developed into the role of the paraplanner. Martin used his experience as an Adviser to be able to understand his IFAs needs and then to provide the support to enable them to perform their role more effectively.

During this time he has continually sought to improve his technical knowledge and has passed many exams to the point where he is now both a Certified Financial Planner (IFP) and a Chartered Financial Planner (CII).

Throughout his career Martin has always believed in sharing his knowledge and experience with his colleagues and helping others in whatever way he can.

After many years he felt that this knowledge and experience could be shared by himself and others in a more formal and organised manner and therefore along with Richard Allum of Adviser Assist set up and built theparaplanner.com. A website designed by paraplanners (Martin and Richard) for paraplanners. Theparaplanner.com allows paraplanners to meet on the forum, share knowledge and comment on areas within Financial Services which affect the role of the paraplanner.

Martins profile is now such that he is well known within Financial Services as a commentator of the role of the paraplanner.

He has written a number of articles for Financial Services publications such as New Model Adviser, Financial Planner (the magazine of the IFP) and Financial Solutions (the magazine of the PFS).

He was also asked to join the Working Group of the Financial Services Skills Council who is tasked with writing the National Occupation Standards for the role of paraplanner as no standard definition of that role currently exists.

Martin is now a freelance paraplanner, consultant and trainer where his skills, experience and insight is used by very select IFAs to provide paraplanning services, training to paraplanners just starting out in their career, consultancy to suggest ways in which a firms paraplanners can be used more effectively and companies wishing to understand the role of the paraplanner and how to improve their marketing strategy to this increasingly important sector of the industry.