Paraplanners who are fed up with anyone being able to call themselves a Paraplanner are taking matters into their hands to come up with a new professional standard.

Following much discussion on the subject at industry gatherings, Paraplanning professionals have been invited to join forces at an event to actually create one.

There has been an ongoing debate about attempts to better define the role of a Paraplanner which, despite the creation of IFP and PFS qualifications, has been hard to achieve.

The lack of a universal standard or so called ‘kitemark’ has frequently been discussed at the Paraplanner Powwows.

Richard Allum CFPCM, founder of the Powwows, has decided to set up a new interactive workshop-style event – a Howwow – to specifically address the matter of the professional standard.

So far, since an invitation went out on Friday, 62 Paraplanners have signed up to attend and contribute towards crafting a new standard. There could be two events in different locations if demand rises high enough.

Mr Allum told Financial Planning Today: “Something that comes up at every Powwow we do is there is no professional standard and anyone can call themselves a Paraplanner, which is very frustrating.

“There are technical exams that anyone can take and non-Paraplanners often take them as well. It demonstrates you can do an exam on tax or whatever but not that you can be a Paraplanner.

"There’s lots of training stuff out there but it tends to be focused on the technical side of things. There’s nothing out there as a benchmark. There’s nothing really to tell them how to do the job day to day.

“A lot of Paraplanners work in different ways in different firms but their core skills and attributes are essentially the same.”

Mr Allum said Paraplanners are keen to drive their own profession forward.

He said: “The Powwow has always been fiercely independent and it seems logical to get Paraplanners together to do it themselves.

“It’s a case of not having professionalism forced on you, you want to do it. Paraplanners are very keen to improve standards all the time and demonstrate professionalism. In the end the client will be the one to benefit as the recipient.”

One of the proposed possible models to follow is nursing, which was suggested recently by IFP 2014 Paraplanner of the Year Dan Atkinson.

Mr Allum said this was being seriously considered and like nursing, a Paraplanning standard would be “reviewed on a peer to peer basis, open to audit and open to checking”.

He said: “It’s a natural step forward for the Paraplanning profession, it’s come a long way in the last decade or so.”

As to what the final product of discussions would look like Mr Allum has his own views but insisted he wanted it to emerge from the collective ideas brought forward at the Howwow.

He said: “I’ve got my ideas but I don’t want to persuade anybody if it’s not what they think. Most Paraplanners want a framework so they can say they’ve achieved that standard and it shouldn’t be too hard to come out of the Howwow with something very good.”