Admin, client service and paraplanning support for Australian financial advisers, honestly compared

We run one of the services on this list. DotVA places one dedicated offshore VA from 10 hours a week for client service and admin work, and we do not write advice. If your practice wants statements of advice written, a paraplanning service will serve you better than we will. If you want a full-time offshore client service team, a specialist staffing provider is the better fit. That is the most useful thing we can tell you, so it comes first.

The method is the same as our comparison of Australian VA agencies. Every claim about another provider comes from its own website, checked on 11 November 2026 and linked in the table or the text. Where a figure is not published we write “not stated publicly” rather than guess, and where a site does not say where its people work, we do not assume. Whichever row you pick, the advice and the sign-off stay with the adviser and the licensee.

If you are earlier than shortlisting and want to see what a VA does all week in an advice practice, start with our financial advisers page.

The services at a glance

Service	What it is	Published price	Where the team is	Advice software named	Terms
DotVA financial adviser virtual assistant (that’s us)	Managed offshore VA: one dedicated person for client service and admin work, not advice	$12-17/hr admin, $18-25/hr specialist, AUD ex GST, from 10 hrs/week; $500 deposit credited to the first invoice	Philippines, working Australian business hours	Xplan, AdviserLogic, Midwinter AdviceOS	No lock-in contract; stop any time in the first 14 days, then 30 days’ notice; free replacement any time
Benfield Paraplanning Services	Paraplanning priced per advice document	Prices as shown on its pricing page, last modified 2 June 2023: SOAs from $400 + GST; standard ROAs from $400 + GST; ROA holds from $300 + GST; gearing or debt recycling with up to 5 projections from $1,200 + GST; multi-complex, SMSF, trusts and companies quoted case by case; CSO support: quoted case by case	Australia: “on-shore paraplanning service”	Wealth Solver and Risk Researcher listed as a priced item; advice platform not named	Not stated publicly
Mutual Plans	Contract paraplanning in three services: preparation, SoA and RoA creation, and an implementation add-on	Not stated publicly; its services page describes “a set fee” for the three packaged together	Australia: “Our team is based 100% on-shore”	Xplan, Plutosoft, Midwinter, AdviserLogic	”No minimum request requirements”; notice not stated publicly
Felcorp Support	Two products: on-demand paraplanning per SoA from a pooled team, or a full-time dedicated paraplanner or adviser admin staff member	On demand, indicative and including taxes: simple SoA $300, intermediate $500, complex $700; new accounts start with a one-off $2,000 prepaid credit that is non-refundable and expires after 60 days of non-use. Full-time, per employee per month including GST: Junior Paraplanner from $3,800, Intermediate from $4,200, Senior from $4,800. One-off trial: $3,000 including GST for 100 hours, 60 of them billable	Punjab, India, on-site at its offices; standard shift 12:30pm to 10:30pm AEST. Its adviser admin page says “You can choose between our teams in India and the Philippines”	Xplan, AdviserLogic, Plutosoft, Intelliflo, ProductRex	On demand: “No lock-in contract, cancel anytime”. Full-time: “3 month initial term”. Its pricing page says 60 days’ notice for standard termination after the initial commitment period, 30 days if performance-related; the agreement renews annually with increases capped at 5%. Its terms of service say a 3-month minimum notice period in the inception year, then 30 days’ written notice
SuperRecords	Outsourced paraplanning and adviser support: a dedicated paraplanner, dedicated adviser support, or volume-based SoAs for a fixed fee (hours not stated)	Not stated publicly: “Pay per job”, or a fixed fee by volume	Offshore; country not stated on its paraplanning page	Xplan, AdviserLogic, COIN, Midwinter, Plutosoft	Not stated on the pages we read
VA Platinum	Offshore dedicated staff for advice practices: admin support, paraplanners and client services officers, full-time or part-time	Not stated publicly: quotes on enquiry; its home page notes that its quotes exclude GST	Offshore; country not stated in the page text we read (its site lists office addresses in Cebu City and Davao City)	XPlan, AdviserLogic, Pluto Soft	Not stated on the pages we read
Access Offshoring	Offshore staffing: full-time employees dedicated to your business, with Financial Planner Support and “Client Support Office (CSO)” roles in its price table	Per year, invoiced monthly in AUD (GST basis not stated): Financial Planner Support $30,500-40,700; Client Support Office (CSO) $30,500-42,700; Admin Assistant $28,500-38,600	Philippines, working from home offices	Not stated publicly	”No lock-in periods”; 3 month recruitment guarantee; notice not stated on the pages we read
Beepo	Offshore staffing with a paraplanning page that lists SOA and ROA documentation, financial modelling and insurance quoting. Asked about part-time staff, its FAQ says “No, we generally recommend you work with full-time staff”	A monthly fee; no dollar figures published	Philippines: its office is in Clark Freeport Zone	Not stated on the pages we read	Not stated on the pages we read
Outsourced	Offshore staffing with a paraplanner role page; full-time, dedicated staff	Not stated publicly: fixed monthly rates on enquiry. Its FAQ describes salary plus a service fee, a one-time setup fee and a one-month security deposit	Philippines	Not stated on the pages we read	Renews month to month; no setup fee for a replacement in the first 12 months; 30-day notice period
hammerjack	Offshore staffing whose financial services page lists Paraplanner and Client Services Officer among the roles it staffs; dedicated full-time staff, or fractional staff on a part-time basis	Indicative pricing through an online calculator, in AUD, excluding GST; no figures in the page text	Manila and Pampanga, Philippines	Not stated on the pages we read	Home page says “No bonds”; notice not stated on the pages we read
Koruna Assist	VA agency with a financial planning VA service: file notes, review packs, implementation follow-ups and CRM upkeep (hours not stated)	Not stated publicly	Philippines; Sydney contact address	Not stated on the pages we read	30 days’ notice if you have worked with your VA for six months or less, 60 days after that

Checked on each provider’s own pages on 11 November 2026. “Not stated publicly” means we could not find the figure on the provider’s public pages; it is an observation, not a criticism.

Two more are worth knowing about. We have not counted them in the 11, because neither shows a price or terms on the pages we read. Clique Paraplanning describes itself as an Australian-based paraplanning group centred on statement of advice preparation and provides its fees on application. Cloudstaff lists paraplanners and client service roles on its financial services page.

Our row in full is on pricing. If a 30-minute call beats ten tabs, book a discovery call, and if another row fits your practice better we will tell you on the call.

Four products share one label

1. Paraplanning priced per document (Benfield, Mutual Plans, Clique Paraplanning, Felcorp’s on-demand service, and SuperRecords, which also offers dedicated staff). You send a brief and a paraplanner prepares the SoA or RoA for your review, with no weekly hours to carry. Benfield, Mutual Plans and Clique describe their teams as on-shore or Australian-based. Felcorp’s on-demand page describes a “BPO operation in India” and SuperRecords describes an offshore team.
2. Dedicated offshore staff at a monthly or annual fee (Felcorp’s full-time service, VA Platinum, Access Offshoring, Beepo, Outsourced, hammerjack, Cloudstaff). A paraplanner, client service officer or admin person who works only for your practice. Felcorp, Access Offshoring and Outsourced describe their staff as full-time. VA Platinum and hammerjack say part-time is available.
3. A VA agency with a financial planning service (Koruna Assist). An agency that recruits an assistant for you and names advice-practice tasks such as review packs and implementation follow-ups.
4. One dedicated VA from 10 hours a week (DotVA). The work around the advice: review packs, the fee consent register, fact find data entry, SOA and ROA template population, implementation and underwriting chasing, and file notes. A VA we place does not choose strategy, run modelling or write the recommendation. Our Xplan page shows where that line sits inside the software.

Several providers in the first two groups say their people draft or prepare SoAs. Felcorp says the finished file comes back “ready for adviser sign-off”, and SuperRecords says your time goes on delegating work and “conducting a final review”. Ask each provider how its work is supervised and who signs.

What the published prices buy

Where we have multiplied or divided, that is our arithmetic, not the provider’s figure, using 4.33 weeks a month.

Option	Published price	What that buys
DotVA admin VA	$12-17/hr ex GST, with a $500 deposit credited to the first invoice	10 hours a week for about $520-736 a month; 20 hours for about $1,040-1,470
DotVA specialist VA	$18-25/hr ex GST	20 hours a week for about $1,560-2,165 a month
Benfield	SOAs from $400 + GST, as shown on its pricing page, last modified 2 June 2023	One statement of advice; four a month would be from $1,600 + GST
Felcorp on demand	Simple SoA $300, intermediate $500, complex $700, indicative, including taxes	One document, drawn from a one-off $2,000 prepaid credit that is non-refundable and expires after 60 days of non-use
Felcorp full-time	Junior Paraplanner from $3,800, Senior from $4,800 a month including GST	One full-time paraplanner, by experience level, on a 3-month initial term; its one-off trial is $3,000 including GST for 100 hours
Access Offshoring	Financial Planner Support $30,500-40,700 a year (GST basis not stated)	One full-time employee: about $2,542-3,392 a month

None of our figures buys a statement of advice. For a full-time role, compare tier with tier: 40 hours a week with us is about $2,078-2,944 a month ex GST on the admin tier and about $3,118-4,330 on the specialist tier. Access Offshoring’s annual figures work out to about $2,375-3,217 a month for an Admin Assistant and about $2,542-3,392 for Financial Planner Support (our division by 12; GST basis not stated; it describes its staff as full-time without stating weekly hours). Where we differ is part-time: we place from 10 hours a week, with a $500 deposit that is credited to your first invoice.

How to compare them

1. Documents or admin? If SoAs are waiting on a paraplanner, buy paraplanning. If review packs, fee consents, implementation follow-up and file notes are running late, buy a client service officer or an assistant.
2. How many hours? A per-document service carries no weekly hours. We start at 10 hours a week. VA Platinum and hammerjack say part-time is available, and several staffing providers describe their staff as full-time.
3. Which software? Xplan is named by Mutual Plans, Felcorp, SuperRecords, VA Platinum and Cloudstaff. As our Xplan page explains, on a licensee-hosted site the dealer group’s site administrator creates the login, so involve your licensee early.
4. What does your licensee allow? ASIC found that four of the 10 licensees it reviewed keep a panel of approved offshore providers. Ask yours before you shortlist.
5. Which security certification? SuperRecords, Koruna Assist, Outsourced and hammerjack say they are ISO 27001 certified, Cloudstaff says its infrastructure is ISO 27001 certified, and VA Platinum says it runs ISO 27001-certified systems. We hold neither ISO 27001 nor SOC 2, and say so on our data security page.
6. What are the exit terms? Published terms run from Mutual Plans’ “No minimum request requirements” to a 3-month initial term on Felcorp’s full-time service. Felcorp’s on-demand service has no lock-in, but its $2,000 prepaid credit is non-refundable. Several providers do not publish theirs, so ask for the agreement.

Licensing, supervision and what ASIC found

Start here rather than with price. This is general information, not legal advice.

Who can give advice. ASIC’s Information Sheet 276, written for AFS licensees and relevant providers, says that from 16 February 2024 “AFS licensees must authorise, appoint and register a relevant provider before the relevant provider can lawfully provide personal advice to retail clients on relevant financial products”. INFO 276 is about registering advisers and does not mention support staff. RG 104.35 adds: “If a third party provides financial services to clients on your behalf, they will generally need to be your authorised representative or hold their own AFS licence”. Our reading: none of the support roles on this page is described by its provider as an authorised adviser, so their job is to prepare material for one, and the advice and sign-off stay with the adviser and the licensee.

You can outsource the function, not the responsibility. Regulatory Guide 104 is ASIC’s guidance for AFS licensees on their general obligations. At RG 104.36 ASIC says it expects a licensee that outsources to take due skill and care in choosing suitable service providers, to monitor their ongoing performance, and to deal appropriately with any actions that breach service level agreements or the licensee’s obligations. In its October 2025 article and its financial advice update of February 2026, ASIC put the same three points as things advice licensees “must” do, and the article says advice licensees “retain ultimate responsibility under the Corporations Act”.

What ASIC found offshore. In an article dated 10 October 2025, ASIC reported on a review of 10 advice licensees whose representatives use offshore service providers. It said “advice licensees are able to outsource functions, including administrative functions, advice support services and paraplanning”, and that licensees “remain responsible for complying with their obligations”. It also said “The risks can be exacerbated when there is inadequate supervision of these functions, particularly when they are outsourced internationally”. It was “concerned that most of the advice licensees reviewed did not have adequate arrangements in place for the assessment, appointment and ongoing monitoring of offshore outsourced services used by their representatives”, and observed that licensees “appear to rely on the representations” providers make about cyber security “without independent assessment or verification”. That applies to our representations as much as anyone’s.

Telling clients. The article reports what the licensees it reviewed do, not a single rule: three required representatives to disclose, for example in the Financial Services Guide, that client information may go to an offshore provider, three required explicit client consent first, and four had no policy on it, which ASIC listed as poor practice. Your licensee’s policy and your privacy obligations decide what applies to you.

Privacy. If the Privacy Act applies to your practice, giving an overseas assistant access to client information is, in most cases, a cross-border disclosure under APP 8 of the Australian Privacy Principles: you must take reasonable steps to make sure the overseas recipient handles the information in line with the APPs, and you generally remain accountable if they do not. Our guide to hiring an offshore VA legally covers the obligations.

Where we draw our own line. These are DotVA’s rules, not a statement of the law. A VA we place never gives financial product advice, general or personal, and never answers a client’s “should I” question. They populate your templates from your fact finds, and strategy, modelling and the recommendation stay with you and your paraplanner. Client-facing emails start as drafts for your review and only go out under the practice’s name once your tone and boundaries are documented. Your VA gets a signed confidentiality agreement on day one and role-scoped access in your advice software. Our page on what a VA can legally do sets out the boundaries.

Who should pick whom

• Statements of advice written by an on-shore Australian team, a few at a time: Benfield, whose pricing page (last modified 2 June 2023) lists SOAs from $400 plus GST, or Mutual Plans and Clique Paraplanning on a quote.
• A per-document price from an offshore team: Felcorp’s on-demand service at an indicative $300-700 a document including taxes, drawn from a one-off $2,000 prepaid credit that is non-refundable, or SuperRecords for volume at a fixed fee.
• A full-time offshore paraplanner with a published monthly price: Felcorp, with a Junior Paraplanner from $3,800 a month including GST on a 3-month initial term, or its one-off $3,000 trial first. Its paraplanners work from its offices in Punjab, India on a 12:30pm to 10:30pm AEST shift.
• A full-time offshore client support or planner support person with a published price: Access Offshoring, at $30,500-40,700 a year for Financial Planner Support and $30,500-42,700 for its Client Support Office role (GST basis not stated).
• A team of paraplanners, client service officers and admin staff from one provider: VA Platinum or hammerjack, which say part-time is available, or Beepo, Outsourced and Cloudstaff.
• A financial planning VA from an agency that states an ISO 27001 certification: Koruna Assist.
• 10 to 30 hours a week from one dedicated person for review packs, fee consents, data entry, implementation chasing and file notes, with the advice staying with you: that is the practice we built DotVA for. See what the work looks like on our financial advisers page, inside Xplan, or as a virtual executive assistant for financial advisers.

Run your own numbers

Run the admin hours against your hourly rate on the VA cost calculator and check our tiers on pricing. If you also write loans, our mortgage broker comparison covers loan processing support, and accounting firms with an advice arm have their own comparison. If the right answer for your practice is one of the other names in the table, we would rather you find that out now than in month two.