Founder Richard Allum CFP^TM Chartered MCSI announced earlier this week that he would step down as organiser of the unconventional conference, held in teepees in the Northamptonshire countryside today. He has run four of the events since the first in 2013 and said it took 200 hours of work to organise the latest one.

He has decided he no longer wishes to carry on running the events due to time constraints and has been looking for others to take on the 'unconference' offbeat events.

During a debate on the future of the events at the Powwow there was overwhelming support among the delegates for another national powwow in future, with many also saying they like the current format and some suggesting they would be concerned about outside organisations coming in because of the possibility of it becoming a sales pitch event.

Mr Allum told Financial Planning Today that there was clearly "a real desire" among Paraplanners for the events to continue but they had to evolve and new organisers were needed. He said he was "very positive" about the future of Paraplanning overall and hoped the events would continue.

He said: "We have had a couple of organisations who've come forward to say they are interested in running it and so we will talk to them and see if they can do it in the way that the Powwow needs to be done and then we will let everybody know."

He said he could not reveal which organisations that this point but he added, "there will be more to come so watch this space."

He thanked everybody who has  been involved over the past four years of the national Powwow including organisers and delegates and he said it had been a big group effort.

About 80 Paraplanners attend the fourth national Paraplanners Powwow. The event has spawned a series of smaller regional and online event organised by Paraplanners themselves.

Guest speakers included Paraplanners, FCA experts and a computer games developer whose work has included Donkey Kong and who explained how they are utilising their gaming backgrounds to help develop Financial Planning.

Also speaking were Lee Musgrave and Mark Betteridge, co-founders of software firm Preciousbluedot, who have built a mobile app for clients of Seven Investment Management.

• More coverage of the event to come