Hire the role you need, for the days you need it
Paraplanning, practice administration, data migration or Centrelink liaison. Take one or take all four, from two fixed days a week. Most practices start with whichever queue is keeping them up, then add days as the work justifies it.
What we do, and what stays with you
PLTCo is a support provider. We do not provide financial product advice or credit assistance unless formally authorised to do so, and we are not authorised to do so under a client's licence by default.
PLTCo assists with
Preparation and administration, on instruction.
- Preparing Statements of Advice (SOAs) and Records of Advice (ROAs) from adviser-approved instructions
- Data entry and validation
- Scenario modelling to adviser-specified parameters
- Factual research
- CRM administration
- Provider follow-up
- Review preparation
- Administrative liaison under documented authority
Your adviser and licensee retain
Every judgement that makes advice, advice.
- Setting the advice scope
- Selecting strategies
- Selecting or recommending products
- Deciding whether advice is appropriate for the client
- Approving implementation
- Issuing the final advice
- Review, approval, supervision and compliance responsibility
- Satisfying the best interests duty and related obligations
- Best interests duty is yours. Nothing we prepare discharges it. Our work is an input to your process, and the judgement that the advice is in the client's best interests is the adviser's alone.
- We don't provide tax advice. PLTCo is not a registered tax agent or tax (financial) adviser. Anything touching tax outcomes is factual research or modelling to your parameters: the tax position is yours or your client's accountant's.
On "pre-vet": where we describe checking a document, we mean checking it against your practice or licensee checklist before it returns to you. That is a completeness and consistency check. It is not legal approval, compliance approval, or approval of the advice itself — those remain with your adviser and licensee.
Practice administration
Administration is the one expense that scales in perfect proportion to success. Every new client adds forms, follow-ups, file notes and a review cycle that recurs forever.
Our administrators are degree-qualified and trained on Australian advice workflow before they touch a client file: super and pension basics, insurance terminology, platform mechanics, Privacy Act handling, file-note discipline.
- Fact finds and pre-meeting packs
- Onboarding and platform application lodgement
- CRM data entry, file notes, document management
- Platform and insurer follow-up until resolution
- Annual review scheduling and preparation
- Ongoing fee arrangement renewals and written fee consents
- Fee-deduction authorities and consent expiry controls
- Evidence of services delivered, and non-ongoing advice-fee consents where applicable
- Reconciliation and exception reporting
- Portfolio reconciliations and cash matching
- Workflow triage inside your system
- Target market determination checks against product DDO requirements
- Supporting professional year candidates with file preparation
- Insurance claims paperwork and follow-up
- Statements of Advice — full strategy documents
- Records of Advice and review documents
- Super consolidation and contribution strategies
- Retirement and transition-to-retirement modelling
- Insurance needs analysis and replacement comparisons
- Aged care and estate planning strategy papers
- Product research against your APL
- Preparation for your licensee's pre-vet or post-vet review process
Paraplanning
A client who says yes on Tuesday and gets an SOA six weeks later has had six weeks to reconsider. Speed isn't a nice-to-have in advice. It's conversion.
Documents are drafted from adviser-approved instructions. The first-draft target is 3 to 5 business days from a complete brief at standard complexity, checked against your practice or licensee checklist before it returns to you. That check is for completeness and consistency — it is not legal approval, compliance approval or approval of the advice, which remain with your adviser and licensee.
Work that doesn't meet the standard agreed in your service schedule is corrected at our cost. Adviser review time is not counted in the target, and complex matters are re-quoted at intake.
Add a paraplannerWhat we mean by 3 to 5 days
Turnaround claims are easy to make and hard to pin down, so here's exactly what ours means. It's the same wording that goes in your service schedule.
- What's being measuredFirst draft back to you
- When the clock startsWhen we have a complete brief
- Which days countBusiness days, AEST/AEDT
- Your review timeDoesn't count against it
- Who issues the final adviceYou do, once approved
- Genuinely complex mattersWe re-quote at intake
Speed without control is just faster rework, so the target sits on top of a documented process rather than replacing one.
- Documented workflow mapped to your practice
- Work performed on adviser-approved instructions
- Human review before a document returns to you
- Exceptions escalated, not guessed at
- File traceability from instruction to draft
- Quality control against your practice checklist
Data and migration
Every practice that has bought a book, changed licensee or switched software is carrying data it doesn't fully trust, and paying for it in rework.
We read the source documents (member statements, application forms, PDSs, file notes) and rebuild the record field by field. Every value traces back to the page it came from, so it can be checked rather than trusted. Anything carrying consequence gets verified by a person: binding nominations, ownership structures, sums insured, contribution history. What can't be resolved goes on an exception list rather than being guessed at.
You get the migration plus an error report listing every unresolved field, so your team works a known list instead of finding problems one review at a time.
Scope a migration- Legacy CRM into Xplan, AdviserLogic or Worksorted
- Book acquisitions and licensee transitions
- Document digitisation from statements, forms and PDSs
- Field-by-field verification of high-consequence data
- Source traceability, so any value can be checked back to its document
- Paper and PDF file digitisation
- De-duplication, normalisation, field mapping
- Data integrity audit and exception reporting
- Ongoing data hygiene as a retained service
- Age Pension claims, lodgement and follow-up
- Asset and income means-test updates
- Reassessments after balance or market movement
- Centrelink schedules for account-based pensions
- Aged care: ACAT coordination, RAD/DAP documentation
- Means-tested care fee estimates
- SA457 and SA485 form preparation
- Commonwealth Seniors Health Card applications
- DVA correspondence and service pension matters
- Nominee arrangements set up and maintained
- Facility and provider follow-up on outstanding items
- Every status change logged in your CRM
Centrelink, aged care and DVA
No other task in a practice has this shape: it matters enormously to the client, it needs no adviser judgement, and the time it takes is set entirely by someone else's queue.
Which is why it should never sit with an adviser, and why it usually does anyway: it arrives urgently, it's client-critical, and it lands on whoever's closest.
We give it a name and a desk, and everything is logged in your CRM so your adviser walks into the review knowing where it stands. All liaison work is performed subject to documented client authority. Our personnel do not use client myGov credentials, do not impersonate clients or advisers, do not sign without authority, do not make decisions on a client's behalf, do not act beyond the authority granted, and do not imply any government affiliation.
Add a Centrelink specialistHow this compares to hiring
A comparison of how each model works, not a claim about which performs better. Outcomes vary considerably by provider, by practice and by how the arrangement is managed.
| Characteristic | Managed support team (PLTCo) | Direct employment | Independent contractor |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ramp-up | People already employed and trained, so start time depends on scope rather than recruitment | Recruitment, notice periods and induction | Can start quickly; availability varies |
| Who reviews output | Our review before return; your adviser approves | Your internal supervision | Depends on the arrangement you set |
| Cost structure | Service fee scoped to volume and turnaround | Salary, superannuation, leave, on-costs, recruitment | Hourly or per-document, variable |
| Continuity | Cover arranged from within the team | You manage leave and turnover | Depends on the individual's availability |
| Scope breadth | Preparation, admin, data and liaison functions | As broad as you hire for | Usually specialised |
| Advice responsibility | Adviser and licensee | Adviser and licensee | Adviser and licensee |
That last row never changes under any model. PLTCo prepares work on instruction; your adviser sets the scope, forms the recommendation, decides whether the advice is appropriate and issues it. Review, approval, supervision and compliance responsibility remain with the adviser and licensee.
On pricing
An hourly rate is the wrong unit for this. The benchmark worth using is the fully loaded cost of the alternative you're weighing — for employment that means salary, superannuation, leave, on-costs, recruitment and supervision time; for a contractor, the effective per-document cost including rework.
So we scope against volume and turnaround: how many documents a month, what checking you want before work returns, how much surrounding administration moves. If two days a week is what the work justifies, that's what we'll quote — we'd rather have a right-sized engagement that lasts than a full week you resent. Three months of real numbers gets you a real figure. All fees quoted in AUD, excluding GST.
Get a scoped figureWays to engage us
The industry default is a dedicated five-day person. That's right for some practices and wasteful for others, so we don't insist on it.
Full-time
Five days a week, dedicated, working Australian hours alongside your team.
SuitsSteady volume with enough surrounding admin to fill a week.
Part-time — 2, 3 or 4 days
Same named person, same training, same Australian lead. Fixed days each week so you can plan around them.
SuitsSmaller practices, seasonal peaks, or testing before committing to a week.
Per document
Paraplanning priced per advice document, no ongoing commitment.
SuitsLumpy volume, overflow quarters, covering leave.
Project
Defined work with a start and an end — a migration, an acquisition, a consent catch-up.
SuitsBacklogs you don't want to carry into next quarter.
AML/CTF depends on the service and the task
Anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing obligations are not identical across advice practices. What applies depends on the client, whether a designated service is being provided, and which tasks are outsourced.
Where PLTCo supports a reporting entity, our involvement can include personnel training appropriate to the tasks performed, customer due-diligence support and document collection, record keeping in line with your programme, escalation of exceptions rather than resolution of them, and confidentiality including tipping-off restrictions.
The reporting entity retains responsibility for its AML/CTF programme, risk assessment and reporting obligations. Our personnel do not access suspicious-matter reports or restricted AML investigation information unless specifically authorised and legally permitted.
Start small and see how it goes
Start with a free pilot week on one real file. No minimum term after that, and 30 days' notice: the commitment to find out is deliberately small.