Paraplan Plus Limited (Paraplan+) was founded by Richard Allum in 2008 and is a United Kingdom-based business specialising in the provision of services to financial advisers.
Paraplan+ operates three brands: The Paraplanners, which provides specialised research and analysis services to UK-based financial advisers. Moneyscope – a web-based cashflow forecasting tool able to be used by personal investment advisers and financial planners worldwide, which was launched in 2010. Paraplanners Powwow – unconferenced informal gatherings around the UK and online, which are designed by paraplanners for paraplanners to exchange views and best practice, and shape the future of the profession.
You can read more about The Paraplanners, Moneyscope and Paraplanners Powwow by clicking the tabs (above).
Paraplan Plus remained the brand name of Paraplan Plus Limited’s paraplanning service until November 2012 when it was rebranded as The Paraplanners to create a clear distinction between its paraplanning and web service brands.
Both The Paraplanners, Moneyscope, and Paraplanners Powwow are trading styles of Paraplan Plus Limited.
The Paraplanners provide a valuable source of research and analysis expertise that is ready-made to plug in to financial planning practices.
Its team of highly qualified paraplanners work case-by-case and side-by-side with financial planners and adviser to provide insight, ideas and in-depth knowledge that helps you to help clients make more sense of their money.
From complex research and analysis right through to the generation of reports and detailed supporting documentation, The Paraplanners service is designed so it’s tailor-made to blend with its customers’ businesses.
For any technical queries, customers are able to access a technical helpline; providing answers to any technical query, no matter how big or small, simple or complex.
The Paraplanners also provide behind-the-scenes administrative support for many customers: analysing and gathering the right client information and data from third parties, new business submission and a number of other administrative tasks.
Every now and then, The Paraplanners provide consultative support to advisory businesses that are in the process of reviewing their services, or want some guidance in building their own in-house paraplanning team.
In addition, the team also works with other organisations including providers, sharing insight and offering guidance where it’s needed.
In all cases, The Paraplanners’s approach is to fully understand your objectives and the context, and then design and deliver the appropriate support.
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Links Visit The Paraplanners / Twitter / LinkedIn
A refreshingly straightforward way to calculate your client’s lifetime cash flow.
Moneyscope is a web application for financial advice and planning professionals which is designed to simplify the generation of lifetime cashflow forecasts for their clients.
The application enables users to dynamically generate an illustrated lifetime cash flow forecast based on their existing savings and investments, and then compare it with their actual cash requirements over their lifetime. Advice professionals are able to use the insight gained from Moneyscope’s forecasts to agree a savings and investment strategy with their clients which addresses either cash shortfall or surpluses.
In addition, Moneyscope enables users to generate an unlimited number of scenarios which model the effect of factors like inflation and average investment return over time, and take account of an investor’s appetite to investment risk.
Moneyscope was initially developed by its founder, Richard Allum, as a macro-enabled spreadsheet for use within his business which provides financial planning services to UK financial advice professionals.[/zilla_one_half]
Richard’s motivation to automate the calculations that drive Moneyscope continues to lie at the heart of the appeal of the application for advice professionals today: Moneyscope requires significantly less initial financial data than desktop-based alternatives in order to generate a forecast which is sufficiently robust to inform the creation of a financial plan.
For advisers, this represents a significant saving of time and – because it is web-based – it is easily accessible to advisers via any internet-enabled device.
The majority of Moneyscope subscribers are UK-based financial advice professionals. However, the brand has users in the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Moneyscope is a service brand operated by ParaPlan Plus – a UK private limited company providing financial planning services to UK financial advice businesses.
Links Visit Moneyscope / CrunchBase Profile / Twitter
The Powwows are informal gatherings designed by paraplanners for paraplanners to exchange views, learn things, fix things and share things.
The Powwows are informal gatherings designed by paraplanners for paraplanners to exchange views, learn things, fix things and share things.
In 2013, with paraplanning at a professional crossroads and a growing frustration with the events on offer to paraplanners, an idea was born.
What if there was an event that offered a new way for paraplanners to exchange views and ideas, and shape the future of the profession. The event would adopt an unconference style, being participant-driven where paraplanners would choose the topics for discussion and design the event.
September 2013 saw just that, when paraplanners from around the UK gathered for the first ever national Paraplanners Powwow in rolling countryside, under open skies, and in teepees.
Galvanised by the positive response from the paraplanning community since that first event, the Powwow movement has continued to grow.
The national Paraplanners Powwow is held every September. Paraplanners are back in those teepees to tackle, alongside industry experts, their selected topics.
Powwow supports paraplanners in hosting mini Powwows for their fellow local paraplanners to meet-up across the UK.
Where Powwows are on a number of topics, Howwows are for those times when paraplanners want to focus on one topic in particular and, in depth.
Sometimes these are held in person, and sometimes they are online. Enter Howwows Online – a monthly live webcast featuring a panel of paraplanners and specialists.
Continuing the chat between events is the Big Tent forum – a ‘digital teepee’ where paraplanners can ask, answer, share and discuss things.
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Links Paraplanners’ Assembly / The Big Tent / Twitter / LinkedIn
Richard Allum is a leading advocate for financial planning and a pioneer of outsourced paraplanning in the UK.
Besides founding Paraplan Plus and Moneyscope and co-founding the Paraplanners Powwow, he is also the first paraplanner to be elected to the Board of the UK’s Institute of Financial Planning.
He co-founded TheParaplanner.com – a web-based resource for UK paraplanners – and the Paraplanner Directory, a listing service enabling financial advisers to seek out freelance and outsourced paraplanners available for casework in the UK.
Richard is a regular speaker at Institute of Financial Planning and Personal Finance Society conferences, seminars and events, and is a frequent contributor to New Model Adviser.
