When Markets Move, the Team Pays for It

If your firm is anything like the ones I speak to, the last few weeks have been relentless. Tax year end. Tariffs rattling portfolios. Clients calling who have not called in months.

You did the right thing. You cleared your diary, picked up the phone, talked people through it. That is what advisers do when markets move. The clients come first.

But somebody had to do the admin behind all of those conversations. The meeting notes from every reassurance call. The file updates. The compliance checks. And in most firms, that somebody was already stretched before the volatility hit.

The Surge Problem

The real cost of market volatility is not the client conversations. Those are the job. The cost is what happens to everyone else in the firm.

A recent survey of over 150 UK advice firms found that 45% of advisers have reduced the number of new clients they take on because of paperwork volume. That tells you how little slack there is in the system even in a normal quarter. When a volatile period lands on top of tax year end, the admin backlog does not just grow. It compounds.

When I was advising, I had about 100 families. Every time markets moved, I would clear my diary and call clients. That was the right call. But it meant my team was working evenings and weekends to keep up with the documentation those conversations created. Meeting notes piling up. File updates falling behind. Compliance reviews waiting.

Hiring more staff to handle a two-week surge was never realistic. You cannot recruit and train a paraplanner for a spike. So the existing team absorbs it, and the bank holiday weekend becomes a working weekend.

What Firms That Handle This Well Look Like

The firms I speak to that absorb volatile periods without the long weekends have not hired more people. They have changed what the admin hours get spent on.

Their advisers finish a client meeting and the notes are done. The meeting recording generates structured notes, action items, and a draft follow-up automatically. The adviser reviews and approves rather than writing from scratch.

Their paraplanners process three or four times the volume of suitability reports without working longer hours. The first drafts come from the firm's own templates, so the paraplanner's job shifts from writing to checking.

Baris Furlonger at Bluecoat Wealth Management told us his suitability report time dropped from 4-6 hours to less than 1 hour per report. Across a team handling a wave of client reviews in a volatile quarter, that kind of capacity changes what the firm can do.

In another firm, their compliance team checks every file against FCA Consumer Duty and COBS requirements before it leaves the adviser's desk, rather than sampling 15% and hoping nothing slips through the other 85%.

The result: when a volatile quarter lands on top of tax year end, the team absorbs it. The advisers clear their diaries and call clients. The paraplanners keep up. The compliance team is confident nothing is being missed. And the bank holiday weekend is actually a weekend.

The Question Worth Asking

Think about the last two weeks. How many evenings or weekends did your team work to keep up with the documentation from client conversations?

Most firms I speak to would say at least a few. The meetings happened, the clients got the calls they needed, but the admin behind those calls piled up and somebody stayed late to clear it. That is the tax your team pays every time markets move.

The firms that have changed the admin layer do not have bigger teams. They have the same people, spending their hours differently. The adviser's meeting notes are done before they stand up from the desk. The paraplanner's first drafts are waiting, not queued. The compliance review runs automatically.

I hope you and your team get a proper rest this bank holiday. You have earned it after this quarter. I wrote about why I started this newsletter in Issue 1, and this is exactly the kind of capacity problem I was talking about. Volatile markets are where it shows up most clearly, because the stakes for the client are highest and the pressure on the team is real.

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