A new workshop to help Paraplanners start up their own businesses will take place next year.

Leading Paraplanner and IFP board member Richard Allum is setting up the event. He said he has received an increasingly high number of calls in the last six months from Paraplanners seeking to go it alone.
He plans to run the first workshop in March at the Oxfordshire offices of his firm The Paraplanners, with a second in London to come at a later date.
Mr Allum said: "When I stood for election for the IFP board one of the things in my manifesto was to do all I could to push the Paraplanner profession forward.
"So it's about doing anything I can, such as the workshop, to help the outsourced world, who don't have a training department.
"It's going to benefit Paraplanning, the advice sector in general, and ultimately the clients."

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Mr Allum launched the now well established Paraplanner Powwows last year, which have developed into a series of events around the country. But he stressed the workshop is entirely separate.

He said: "This is not a Powwow, it's purely something we are running as The Paraplanners for the outsourced market. It all came about because over the past years I have had people getting in touch saying 'I'm thinking about setting up my own business'. Over the last six months there's been a big rise in interest."
He said he has offered advice to a number of Paraplanners in recent years and has enjoyed seeing them start up and begin to prosper.
The idea of the workshop is to start up something more structured in terms of giving guidance. Mr Allum decided to go ahead with the idea after a blog post he wrote on how to set up and succeed as an outsourced Paraplanner sparked interest.
He said: "I wondered whether there could be a way for Paraplanners who want to start-up or develop their existing home-grown Paraplanning service to get together – in an informal, workshop-style, setting.
"So I set up a survey. 32 Paraplanners responded. And all of them were positive about the potential of the idea."
He aims to tailor the sessions so that people who want to take part can gain as much from the event as possible – and has therefore launched a survey to find out their views.
Mr Allum said there were many elements to setting up a business and this meant that Paraplanners swap their one job, effectively for two, when they launch a firm themselves.
Aspects such as the invoicing system, VAT, tax returns, and marketing all have to be considered, he said, and these are some of the topics that could be covered in the workshop.
To take part in the survey click HERE. It runs until 19 December.

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