Financial adviser technology: building efficiency into every stage of advice

Most advice firms know they could be more efficient. Fewer know exactly where the time is going. In this Adviser 3.0 session, Paul Thomson-Clark of intelliflo drew on survey data from intelliflo's customer base to show where UK advice firms lose time, what the most tech-engaged firms do differently, and how to put AI to work safely without taking the adviser out of the loop. What follows is a summary of the four technology levers he discussed for UK financial advisers. It is illustrative rather than prescriptive, and the principles apply whichever technology provider you use.

The efficiency gap in UK advice firms

Paul, a former paraplanner and administrator, was clear that the session was built on what intelliflo's customers say rather than on opinion. intelliflo's technology is used by more than half of the UK advice market, and in spring 2026 it asked those customers to mark their own homework on efficiency. The results will be familiar to most firms:

With that many systems, rekeying is almost inevitable. What firms told intelliflo they want is to connect their tech stack, process work faster with fewer errors, turn client data into genuine insight, free people up for higher-value work, engage clients digitally from end to end, and achieve more with the same resource. As Paul put it, self-awareness is the best starting point. He boiled the wish list down into four levers:

Lever 1: connect and integrate your tech stack

Paul called this the biggest single win. The principle is simple: key data once, then reuse it everywhere. Anything that removes rekeying saves time and reduces errors at the same time.

His advice was to start simple. Switch on automated valuation and income statement feeds for every platform and provider you can, even those where clients only hold a handful of plans. A handful of daily valuations still adds up to a lot of time not spent on hold to a provider. Once that is in place, treat your CRM or back office as the single source of truth and push its data out to the other tools you use, rather than maintaining the same details in several places.

Beyond the basics, Paul described several ways firms are cutting out manual entry:

One final tip before moving on: ask your provider what you are already paying for. Tools such as cash flow modelling or AI note taking may be included in your existing licence, and you could be paying separately for something that is already sitting there unused.

Lever 2: data quality and analysis

Complete data is only half the job. The other half is being able to see and interpret it. Paul's view was that your CRM should let you visualise your data without any coding knowledge. Dashboards make it easy to spot where data quality is weak and fix it in bulk, rather than record by record. Once the data is in good shape, everything built on top of it becomes reliable: reporting, management information and the evidence you need for Consumer Duty.

He gave two everyday examples. If a fund has had a difficult period, how many of your clients hold it? And how many clients have not yet used this year's ISA allowance? A live dashboard can answer both questions in a click, without exporting to a spreadsheet and building pivot tables.

Firms with more appetite can export their back office data into a data warehouse, combine it with other data sets and build their own dashboards. But for most firms, Paul suggested the pre-built dashboards their provider already offers are the 80 per cent win with none of the heavy lifting.

Lever 3: AI for financial advisers, used safely

Nearly three quarters of the firms surveyed said they already use AI, and Paul suspected some of the rest use it without realising. But usage is narrow. Around 87 per cent of firms using AI use it for one thing only: note taking and transcription. Very few are using it for portfolio work, supporting recommendations, or checking advice against in-house and regulatory standards.

Even at the note-taking stage, a good meeting assistant captures more than hard facts. It can pick up a client's goals and aspirations, changes in income, comments relevant to investment preferences or attitude to risk, and potential indicators of vulnerability. It should handle a range of source formats, including audio, video, handwritten notes and PDFs, and draft meeting notes, summaries and suitability reports for the adviser to work from.

The crucial step is what happens next. The assistant presents suggested updates, the adviser reviews and edits them, and only once they are accepted does anything change in the client record. In the Q&A, Paul walked through how this works in practice: suggested vulnerability flags come with the evidence behind them to accept or decline; meeting notes can be edited to remove small talk; and extracted data is shown side by side with what is already on file before anything is committed. The original recording is retained alongside the transcript, so you can always check what the client actually said.

Paul also outlined where intelliflo expects AI in the advice process to go next: assistants that monitor client data for changes in circumstances and flag where advice may be needed, check that recommendations are backed by evidence in the client record, and support Consumer Duty and other FCA reporting. Whatever tools you consider, the same test applies. Does the technology assist the adviser, or does it make decisions the adviser cannot see and check?

Lever 4: engage clients digitally

Clients bank, shop and even contact their GP digitally. They increasingly expect the same from their adviser. Paul described the client portal as the obvious front door, and suggested firms that looked at portals a few years ago take another look, because they have grown up considerably.

A modern portal goes well beyond document sharing. It can support online fact finding, risk profiling, digital signatures, a portfolio overview and even "what if" scenarios, such as downsizing, retiring early or paying for a family wedding. Crucially, it should support the adviser rather than replace them. The best client outcomes still come from conversations, whether in person or online.

Some clients will never use a portal, and that is fine. But Paul made the point that their children and grandchildren probably will, and when they are choosing an adviser, a digital experience may well be part of the decision.

What tech champions do differently

Since 2018, intelliflo has published an annual Adviser Index, which groups its customers into four segments by how fully they use their technology, from firms just starting out through to "champions". Comparing champions with firms at the starting-out stage:

Source: intelliflo Adviser Index. Figures reflect intelliflo's customer data and show association, not cause and effect.

The direction of travel is clear, though. More firms are moving into the champion group each year, which suggests the profession is steadily recognising what well-used technology can do for the business.

Overcoming the blockers

If the case is so strong, why isn't everyone doing it? Over half the firms surveyed had no plans to change their setup, despite the challenges they described. Paul acknowledged five genuine blockers and offered a practical response to each:

Key takeaways for UK advisers

From the Q&A