We all have pension questions we’ve never quite got round to asking. Maybe the moment wasn’t right. Maybe the person wasn’t right. Maybe you just didn’t want to be the one to ask. This Assembly is your chance to put those questions to someone who genuinely loves answering them. Consider this your pension intervention.

Join us online at 1.00 pm on Tuesday 29 July for a practical, no-slides pension clinic with host Richard Allum and guest Adam Cole, Retirement Specialist at Quilter.

Together, they’ll work through some of the pension topics that often crop up in cases or have you scratching your head. Things like: 

• Transitional tax-free cash, lump sum allowances and lump sum death benefit allowances
• Taking tax-free cash after 75 and the implications
• Taking protected tax-free cash and moving into drawdown
• How defined benefit pensions work
• Guaranteed annuity rates, guaranteed cash sums and other features of older-style contracts
• Annuities including the different options available to members, dependants, nominees and successors
• The State Pension and how it accrues, what’s inheritable and common areas of uncertainty
• Safeguarded benefits, what they are and how they affect transfers
• The minimum pension age changes coming in 2028

What can you expect to take away?

You’ll leave with a clearer understanding of some of the trickier or less travelled corners of pension planning, and with the confidence that comes from having had the space to ask the questions you might not always feel comfortable raising elsewhere. 

Save your spot.

The rules are changing and from April 2027 and unspent pension pots will fall within the scope of inheritance tax. Draft legislation is now published, and there’s plenty for paraplanners to get to grips with.

This Assembly  will look at how we got here, and where we need to go with less than nine months to go. We look at what the May 2026 HMRC technical note and draft legislation actually confirmed, what it means in practice, and, what it means for the planning advice paraplanners are helping to shape right now.

Join us online at 1.00 pm on 1 July 2026 for a practical session with host Richard Allum and guest Mark Devlin, Senior Technical Manager at M&G, who brings real technical depth to some of the trickier questions the changes raise.

Together, they’ll cover:

• The background: how we got here, and what the consultation process did and didn’t address
• Discretionary vs directed schemes: a refresher on the distinction and why it matters for IHT treatment
• How the new process will work in practice, including the role of personal representatives
• Planning implications: is it still worth funding a pension, and at what level?
• Balancing pension use for retirement income against IHT exposure, and keeping an eye on taxable funds for beneficiaries
• A common income tax misconception, and why some recent press coverage has muddied the water

What can you expect to take away?

At the end of this Assembly, you’ll have a better understanding of the confirmed changes, a better grasp of the planning considerations that flow from them, and some practical frameworks to bring to your paraplanning work, whether you’re reviewing existing pension strategies or helping to shape new ones.

We got together online at 1pm on Wed 17 June 2026 for The Self-Assembly Paraplanning Show.

Why ‘Self-Assembly’? Because host Sam Tonks and guests Alan Gow, Jackie Manning and Kimberley Malin started out with four talking points to cover in one lunch-hour. The topics were

– how the paraplanning year has gone so far
– what’s coming up for paraplanners
– what could be a thing but isn’t yet, and
– what events and resources they’re recommending right now

The result is a wide-ranging conversation that takes in mixed feelings about AI (it’s handy for handover emails, but when it’s confidently wrong..?), chat about rising role of annuities and gifting from excess income, plus questions about the decline of cash, what advice might look like in the future if so-called ‘finfluencers’ are allowed to continue to ‘finfluence’.

Fancy tuning in? Then watch or listen now

Setting up your own outsourced paraplanning business can be an exciting prospect but going into it with your eyes open  and with the benefit of other people’s hard-won experience makes for a much stronger start.

On Wednesday 3 June, our guests had an honest, practical conversation about what it really takes to start an outsourced paraplanning business.

Host Richard Allum was joined by three paraplanners who’ve recently been through the process: Jawaad Tanwir founder of ParaplanX, Ellie Bailey founder of Paraflo, and Phillip Williams of Beyond Paraplanning (and author of ‘What If?…: A Guide To Working Smart & Building Your Own Path In Paraplanning‘).

Together they reflected on their own experiences and shared what they’ve learned, covering:

• what the outsourced paraplanning market looks like right now, and whether it’s a good time to be thinking about this
• the questions worth asking yourself before you take the leap and how to know if it’s genuinely what you want
• how to go about setting up an outsourced business in practice
• what they wish they’d known at the start, and what they’re still figuring out
• how they’re finding balance in work, in business, and beyond

What can you expect to take away?

After tuning into this Assembly, you’ll leave with a clearer picture of what outsourced paraplanning business life actually looks like including the opportunity, the reality, and the things worth thinking through before you commit. Whether you’re seriously considering it or just curious, this is an opportunity to hear from people who’ve been exactly where you are.

Are you an outsourced paraplanner?

Whether you’re the only employee of your paraplanning practice, or you lead a paraplanning powerhouse with employees and a hefty bank of clients, outsourced paraplanners share lots of things in common.

You just do.

But here’s the thing: despite the growing number of outsourced paraplanners in the UK these days, opportunities to get together to talk only about things that matter in the outsourced world, are surprisingly few and far between.

Switch off. Show up. Join in. 

So, if you’re an outsourced paraplanner, here’s our invitation: at 1pm on Thursday 25 June 2026, set your notifications to ‘do not disturb’, click on the Zoom link in your event invitation and gather with other outsourced paraplanners across the UK for an hour of conversation, ideas and practical insights.

There’s nothing to prepare.

We’re starting this Assembly discussing fees and see where it goes from there.

Spaces are limited. To save a spot hit ‘Book Event’ and look out for the calendar invitation in your inbox.

Trusts used to be the kind of thing you’d come across every now and again. Something to dust off the knowledge for, handle carefully, then put back on the shelf.

That’s changing. With pension IHT changes on the horizon, trust planning is becoming a regular fixture on paraplanners’ desks and the paraplanners best placed to support their clients will be the ones who can approach it with genuine confidence, not just familiarity.

This Assembly is designed to help you get there.

This practical Assembly takes you from the foundations right through to real-world trust planning decisions.

Shaun Moore, Tax and Financial Planning Expert at Quilter, joins host Richard Allum for this Assembly. Together they work through the essentials and the less obvious bits that every paraplanner working with trusts needs to have at their fingertips.

During this Assembly, we:

• explore why trust planning has moved from the occasional to the everyday, and why the pension IHT changes expected from April 2027 are likely to accelerate that further
• get to grips with the types of trust you’re most likely to encounter (loan trusts, discounted gift trusts and reversionary interest trusts) and how to tell them apart when different providers call them different things
• use the three circles of access, flexibility and tax efficiency as a practical framework for matching the right trust to the right client
• explore the common mistakes and questions that come up again and again
• understand the ongoing practical obligations that come with trusts, from the Trust Registration Service to trustee bank accounts, and when a professional trustee makes sense

What can you expect to take away?

You’ll leave with a clearer, more confident grasp of trust planning, not just the theory, but the practical judgement to apply it. Whether you’re doing in-depth trust research or writing up recommendations that involve one, this session gives you a framework and a reference point you can keep coming back to.

Salary sacrifice – or salary exchange – has been around for ages. But a proposal in last autumn’s Budget to cap the national insurance relief available on pension contributions has brought it into sharp focus.

We racked our brains but don’t think that we’ve ever explored the essentials of salary sacrifice for paraplanners so, while the Finance Bill is making its way through Parliament, we decided to invite Lucy Clark and James Jones-Tinsley from Barnett Waddingham to tell us what it’s all about and what’s changing in future.

Lucy explains: 

• what salary exchange actually is
• the national insurance savings it can unlock – for employees and employers
• the different ways to structure it
• the things that can go wrong

James rounds off the 30-minute briefing by explaining the latest on the progress of the proposed cap, which is due to come into effect by 6 April 2029, and why its final form is far from settled – and may not even happen.

Think about the last time you worked on a financial plan for a family with a child or adult with special educational needs or a disability (SEND). How confident were you that the plan truly reflected what that family needs, not just now, but for the long term?

As paraplanners, we’re in a position to make a real difference but only if we understand what good planning for these families actually looks like.

So in this Assembly first-time host Peter Spence from Fintuity was joined by Ali Fanshawe and Rhiannon Gogh, co-founders of SENDA who are specialists who work with financial and legal advisers to deliver safer, smarter planning for SEND families.

All three participants have children with SEND needs.

What the Assembly covers

Together, Peter, Ali and Rhiannon talked about what special needs planning really involves, where traditional advice tends to fall short, and what paraplanners can do to fill that gap.

The conversation covers:

• how many families are affected in the UK and what the financial planning picture looks like for them on a personal level
• an exploration of the consequences of getting financial planning wrong for families with SEND needs
• the key problems that can crop up during a financial planning process compared to a regular advice process
• the training and support that’s available if you want to develop your knowledge

What can you expect to take away?

By tuning into this Assembly, you’ll get a clearer sense of where special needs planning is different and what to start thinking about when planning for SEND needs. It’s an introduction to the subject rather than a complete guide. But it’s a great primer which offers practical ideas you can use right now. Ideas that will give confidence about doing the right thing for clients whose plans need to take account of family members with special educational needs and disabilities.

When a client is moving into retirement and suddenly becomes far more aware of every market dip, smoothed funds can feel like an obvious solution. But how well do you really understand what’s happening under the bonnet?

More providers are launching smoothed funds, which means they’re cropping up more often in research and recommendations. Yet the mechanics and the meaningful differences between the various types aren’t always well understood. If you’ve ever found yourself focusing more on the smoothing overlay than the underlying fund, this session is for you.

Almost everything you need to know about smoothed funds in one hour

On Wednesday 8 April 2026, first-time Assembly host Jawaad Tanwir, founder of outsourced paraplanning practice ParaplanX, was joined by Ed Green from M&G for a practical, product-agnostic look at how smoothed funds actually work.

Ed started where it makes most sense to start: with the client. Why do smoothed funds exist at all? What role does psychology play in the transition into retirement, and when does reducing short-term volatility genuinely serve a client’s interests? From there, the conversation got into the detail paraplanners need.

During this Assembly, we covered:

• the three main types of smoothed fund, conventional with-profits, future expectation of returns (such as the EGR model), and backward-facing averaging, and what distinguishes them
• why smoothed funds tend to carry higher costs than conventional multi-asset funds, and what those costs are buying
• scale, structure and smoothing as a framework for evaluation
• private market exposure and how it contributes to lower-volatility returns
• what to actually look at when you’re researching these funds (hint: start with the underlying multi-asset fund, not the smoothing overlay)

What you will take away

By watching or listening to this Assembly, you’ll have a clearer understanding of smoothed funds. You’ll be able to cut through the product noise and research them with more confidence. Whether you’re encountering smoothed funds for the first time or want to sharpen your existing knowledge, this is a practical session designed to give you exactly what you need to do your job better.

Are you an outsourced paraplanner?

Whether you’re the only employee of your paraplanning practice, or you lead a paraplanning powerhouse with employees and a hefty bank of clients, outsourced paraplanners share lots of things in common.

You just do.

But here’s the thing: despite the growing number of outsourced paraplanners in the UK these days, opportunities to get together to talk only about things that matter in the outsourced world, are surprisingly few and far between.

Switch off. Show up. Join in. 

So, if you’re an outsourced paraplanner, here’s our invitation: at 1pm on Thursday 30 April 2026, set your notifications to ‘do not disturb’, click on the Zoom link in your event invitation and gather with other outsourced paraplanners across the UK for an hour of conversation, ideas and practical insights.

There’s nothing to prepare. Just come along ready to share your answer to one question: 

‘What’s on your mind today?’

Spaces are limited. To save a spot hit ‘Book Event’ and look out for the calendar invitation in your inbox.