Paraplanners join forces to help during coronavirus crisis

Outsourced paraplanning group The Paraplanners managing director Richard Allum has established a group for outsourced or freelance paraplanners who may be worried about their business.

Set up through the community and online forum, the Paraplanners Powwow, the group is supporting those running outsourced and freelance paraplanning businesses during Covid-19.

"There has already been a lot of interest in this," Allum said.

The Paraplanners was set up 18 years ago to offer remote paraplanning services to UK advisers and its staff have worked from home since the business' inception.

Allum added: "We've been helping some advisers adapt to working from home. It's all come about at very short notice so they've been asking for some help and advice about how they can efficiently work from home. Firms have had to adapt very quickly."

He said the coronavirus would put a strain on paraplanners in the same way it would many businesses, but for many the adaptation would be relatively seamless.

"For many paraplanners, working from home so consistently will bring challenges they've not faced before of new working practices, balancing work alongside other demands that are now exacerbated,  worry about family and friends, juggling the change, alongside a busy time of the year and the response required to the market's performance," he said.

"People that have been working from home for quite a while it's business as usual for them so there's some advantages for those people."

The lang cat consulting director Mike Barrett said the group was uniquely placed as a safety net for traditional advice firms during the Covid-19 outbreak and said their business was likely to grow.

"The value is they're established already, a lot of outsource paraplanners have been working from home since day one so they're not having to go through this big learning curve," he said.

"A lot of advice firms if they're being locked down, having the ability to outsource that to someone who's working from home and remotely would be very attractive, so I would expect demand for their services to increase in coming months."

MHA Henderson Loggie paraplanner Claire Lindsay has also started a thread on the Powwow Big Tent forum, for members to check in with each other through these testing times.

The group, called Supporting One Another, has generated significant interest since it was launched two days ago.

Lindsay explained: "I couldn't sleep the other night and the idea of people checking in with each other was something that just popped into my head. I know it must be really hard for people just now that are feeling alone and I just wanted to see if I could do something to help".

Allum said the online groups exemplified the rationale behind Powow, which was set up in 2012 and now has 2300 paraplanners. 

"It's exactly what the Powwow is all about - spaces created by paraplanners for paraplanners to learn things, fix things and share things," he said, adding: "In the days and weeks ahead, the ability to continue to gather via the Powwow could be invaluable for paraplanners, and their own businesses or the businesses that they work for."

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