A virtual executive assistant in London gives you senior EA support without the fully loaded cost of an in-house hire. Once salary, employer national insurance, pension, recruitment fees, software and desk space are counted, an in-house London EA costs far more than the advertised salary, while a virtual arrangement is typically a fraction of that and can start within a couple of weeks.
London is where the maths for executive support breaks first. Salaries are high, good candidates move quickly, and the recruitment cycle for a strong EA runs into months. Meanwhile the work that made you want the hire, the diary, the inbox, the travel, the endless supplier chasing, keeps arriving.
Virtual support solves the timing and the cost problem at once, provided you set it up properly. The failure cases are almost always about scope and access rather than distance.
The advertised salary is the smallest part of the picture. Add employer national insurance, pension contributions, recruitment fees on first-year salary, equipment, software licences, holiday and sickness cover, and the management time the role consumes while it beds in.
The result is a number materially above what you budgeted, and it is fixed. If your delegable workload is fifteen hours a week rather than forty, you are paying full price for partial use.
Virtual support covers the overwhelming majority of an EA remit: diary ownership, inbox triage, travel and itineraries, meeting preparation and follow-up, supplier and invoice chasing, research and weekly reporting.
What it does not cover is anything requiring physical presence. If you need someone to greet visitors, manage an office or run errands across the city, that is a different role. Most founders find the physical component is a small share of the work, and one that can be handled by a local on-demand arrangement when it arises.
For a London-based leader the practical question is overlap, not location. Agree the working window before the engagement starts, along with a response time for urgent items and a separate one for routine requests.
A written expectation of, say, thirty minutes on anything flagged urgent during the agreed window and same-day on everything else removes almost all the friction people associate with remote support.
Run a two week log before you hire. Record every task you would happily hand over, roughly how long it took, and whether it recurs. Most founders find four to six hours a week in the diary alone once rescheduling and meeting prep are counted.
Then review after thirty days against that same log. The honest measure is hours returned to you each week and whether the recurring items are shrinking, not how many tasks were completed.
A conventional virtual assistant is priced by time, which quietly rewards work that never gets faster. An AI-trained assistant does the task, maps it, then rebuilds it as a documented workflow inside your own accounts.
In practice that means month three looks different from month one. The remit widens while the hours stay flat, which is where the cost comparison against a London hire becomes decisive rather than marginal.
How much does a virtual executive assistant cost in London? Less than an in-house hire once the fully loaded cost of employment is counted. The right comparison includes employer national insurance, pension, recruitment fees, software, equipment and cover, not just the salary. Alvara confirms pricing after a short fit call.
Is a virtual executive assistant worth it for a London founder? If you have roughly five hours a week or more of genuinely delegable work, usually yes. Below that, better systems tend to help more than another person. The reliable test is a two week task log followed by a thirty day review.
Will my assistant work London hours? Yes. Working windows are agreed before the engagement starts, along with response times for urgent and routine requests.
What if I occasionally need someone physically present? Virtual support covers the remit apart from tasks needing physical presence. Those are usually a small share of the work and can be handled locally on demand while the assistant coordinates them.
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