Richard Allum, founder of The Paraplanners, believes the strong ethos of collaboration among paraplanners is helping to put paraplanning firmly on the financial services map.
If you want to find a keen advocate of the collaborative culture in the paraplanning community, where peers freely share ideas and knowledge among themselves, then look no further than Richard Allum. The founder of The Paraplanners, an outsourced paraplanning service, has been championing the role of the paraplanner since he started the business in 2002. He was elected to the Board of the Institute of Financial Planning in 2012, with a mandate to help boost the profile of paraplanners in the industry, and was the initial driving force behind what have become known as the Paraplanner Powwows, delegate decided ‘unconferences’, the national version of which literally takes place in teepees in a field (see page 20 for coverage of this year’s event).
In addition, he recently offered to host a workshop for paraplanners who run existing freelance or outsourcing businesses, or who aspire to do so, which will allow people to discuss the issues with their peers and pick the brains of those already in the market, including Richard’s. That idea for a workshop has become two events and both are oversubscribed.
Richard says the spirit of collaboration is one he and his team at The Paraplanners are keen to engender both within the firm and externally in the financial advisory landscape.
“We have a very collaborative approach inside our team here, in the way that we work in the business and with our clients and also in promoting paraplanning as a profession, pushing it forward and continually looking to improve standards,” he says.
The team write regular blogs, many of which openly share ideas and best practice. “In our blogs we write about the issues we deal with on a daily basis, so how we approach long-term care or how we approach quality control and proof reading; we share what we do because we think best practice sharing is the way for everyone to improve,” Richard says. “And that’s proved very popular, we’ve had loads of hits on the website from people wanting to read the blogs.”
That culture and approach is also reflected in the general paraplanning community, he says, “which is very supportive and willing to share ideas and knowledge and provide support to their fellow paraplanners”.
He suggests this may be attributable to the fact that the paraplanner community has a younger demographic than the general advisory community, and a more equal split between male and female participants. “But it’s mainly that people want to learn from each other. These are people that are either doing paraplanning to be a financial adviser or planner or they are career paraplanners who want to become the best they possibly can, so they want to learn.
“What you also tend to find when you work in a this kind of community is that if you give something to somebody they will give something back to you, so collaboration works really well,” Richard says.
