Three financial planners have launched a firm that they say will not only prepare advisors looking for their first job, but also provide much-needed support services for advisors already in the industry.

Planning Zoo, which opened its doors in June, is a virtual organization that provides advisors with data entry services and, in the process, provides training and education for fledgling advisors coming out of college and the certified financial planner (CFP) programs. 

The firm is the brainchild of Caleb Brown, Carrie Jones and Sue Chesney, who serve as the firm's directors and sole owners of the firm.

The trio say the Athens, Ga.-based Planning Zoo will address a couple of needs in the planning industry. First, it offers competitively priced data entry services for advisors. But, those data entry services are performed by people looking to gain a foothold in the advisory field. The training they get from Planning Zoo will be invaluable to them as they pursue their careers, they said.

The three founders have had long careers in financial planning with Brown starting his career in 2003 working at Plano, Texas-based Strategic Financial Planning Inc. He has also hosted podcasts for new planners and spent six years teaching practice management at the University of Georgia before he founded his own planner recruitment firm, Athens, Ga.-based New Planner Recruiting, in 2009. 

Chesney has worked in financial planning since 1997 working for such firms as Jersey City, N.J.-based Pershing, Denver-based Allmerica Financial/VeraVest Investments Inc., as well as Denver-based Mike Guess & Associates, before launching her own firm in 2005. In 2011, she became the owner and principal of Denver-based Delegated Planning, which is a firm that provides outsourced services for advisors.

Jones began her career as an operations manager at Jacksonville, Fla.-based Allegiance Financial Advisors in 1999. Throughout her career she has worked as a financial planner for different firms including Jacksonville-based LBA Wealth Management and Jacksonville-based Life Planning Partners, before doing freelance planning work. 

Chesney explained Planning Zoo hires experienced planners who verify the student's work before returning it to the advisor. Planning Zoo also issues detailed reports to its data entry customers that list any missing information or areas of concern that were observed in client data.

Students and career-changers are brought on board to physically input the data so they can have hands on experience using the software that most financial planning firms use. They are also compensated $20 per hour for their work, according to Jones.

“They go into doing actual cases for planners [with] real world data,” she said. “They enter it on their own, on their own time, using a cloud environment that is secure.”

While the students will not be making any recommendations based on this information, Jones said they will be learning how to read the information and what they can learn from it.

“The aspiring planners are learning how to read various client documents and where the information goes in the software,” she said. “They also learn what it all means to the client situation, how to improve the outcome [and] how the advisor might present it.”

The three founders lend their personal background and experience to the program. Brown handles the students and background checks, while Chesney focuses on the general business setup and vetting new advisors, Jones said. Adding that she handles training the students, technology, and does case reviews with students while everyone has a hand in marketing.

To help the students with inputting the data, Planning Zoo provides training for the software most planners use, including eMoney. The firm will begin teaching workers how to use MoneyGuidePro in November. The firm is also working on a deal to teach Right Capital in the future.

The entire program is done virtually with students receiving the work over the internet. This allows advisors and would-be planners to use the firm’s services from anywhere in the country.

The firm is currently considering 50 new candidates for the upcoming semester starting in January and is potentially going to be working with 25 advisors once it is able to train the students in all three software programs, Chesney said.

“The focus is getting more students ready to hire,” she said. “Anything to push that mission, we are open to it.”

Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly the city where Allegiance Financial Advisors is based.