“We pay for our people’s education. I am really proud of the team we have,” says IPF chief
Claire Hanrahan, managing director of Irish Pensions and Finance.
For recruiters, experienced pensions people have long been notoriously difficult to find.
This is not an issue for Claire Hanrahan, managing director of Irish Pensions and Finance, who is, she says, currently on “a bit of a recruitment drive”.
The number she recruits varies from year to year. In the next year and a half, she plans to recruit 20 or so trainee financial planners.
Where will they come from?
“We advertise on Indeed,” she replies. “We also get a lot of people on LinkedIn. Then we have our ‘Refer a Friend’ scheme, which works really well. To those who refer, we pay €750 if their friend is still with us three months later and another €750 if they are with us a year.”
Describing the trainee positions she is planning to fill, Hanrahan says: “Even though our trainees are professionals that get qualified and reach Masters level, we bring them in for what is essentially a sales job. It’s the best job in the world. But it’s not right for everybody, as the sales aspect is so important and not everybody is right for sales. That’s where we find the difficulty.”
Elaborating on what new trainees can find challenging, she says: “In any sales role there can be rejections. If you don’t mind rejection, then that’s fine. But for some people, rejection can get too much.”
Most wouldn't imagine those working in pensions as being in the sales business. Hanrahan makes the point that her people train to be consultants. “Our business is first and foremost customer oriented,” she says. “What’s in the best interest of our customers comes before everything else. If we know they are considering doing something that would not be in their best interest, we would be the first to tell them.”
Providing a glimpse into what the first year at Irish Pensions and Finance might be like for trainees, Hanrahan says: “When they come in, they start doing the QFA exams. There are six of those. They learn about pension schemes in the public sector; all about pension, investment and life insurance products. Usually — provided the trainees do everything the job requires them to do and they hit the exam milestones we set for them — then it takes about a year to get promoted from trainee to financial planner level.”
Advising that there is a structured career path at Irish Pensions and Finance, Hanrahan says: “Right now there are 59 advisors. Our plan is to increase that to 80 by the end of next year. The really good thing is that every one of us here — myself included — came in as a trainee. We don’t look to hire people coming in with years of experience working with our competitors.”
Hanrahan says that most of those who come in as trainees are not graduates. “If someone has gone to college, I like to see that they have worked well there. For me that is a good indicator that they are someone who manages their time well, someone who gets the results they want.
“Anyone who has done a sales job, who has a good proven track record in sales, is of interest to us. They don’t have to have a degree with that, to get in touch. We get a lot of applications from people who have worked in general insurance. We also have good people who might have done door-to-door sales before they came here. I love seeing door-to-door sales on a CV. We recruit from a range of backgrounds. We’ve a good few working here who came from the car industry.”
Asked what the pensions market is like out there, she replies: “We deal with the public sector. The brilliant pension schemes that were once associated with the public sector are not what they once were. I think it's fair to say that they have been getting worse year on year for some time now. Because of this public sector people need to top up their pensions more than ever before. The years of them having huge pensions are gone.”
How busy are they?
“We are busier now than we have ever been before. We have 28,000 customers. We look after civil servants, gardaí, the health service and the local authorities. I think we are the only wholly owned Irish brokerage of our size. Most of the others have been bought out.”
I don’t doubt for a moment that Hanrahan is an excellent mentor. Recalling her own journey to the top she says: “I started when I was 24. I’m nearly 20 years in the company now and I worked my way up. I started off as a trainee financial planner. From there, I worked my way up to be a sales manager. Then in 2016, I became a partner in the company and six years later, I became the managing director. I went all the way up through the career path.”
We are determined to get everybody up to Masters in Financial Services level,” she says. “We pay for our people’s education and we absolutely encourage it. I am really proud of the team we have."
At Irish Pensions and Finance, there are six on the senior management team; five of whom are female. “There are a lot of female leaders in this company,” says Hanrahan.
