- New research highlights five innovations that will shape the future of scalable, compliant financial advice.
- Leaders identify legacy technology, weak data models and fragmented systems as the biggest barriers to progress.
- The introduction of Targeted Support measures makes the findings especially pertinent.
- Firms call for innovation with integrity that delivers better client outcomes while strengthening evidencing and compliance.
London, UK – 4 December 2025 – Ortec Finance, the global leader in intelligent, institutional-grade technology for investment decision-making, today announced the publication of a new research report in partnership with NextWealth - “Innovation with Integrity: The Future of Financial Planning Systems.”
The new study captures the perspectives of senior leaders across major wealth managers, platforms, and life and pensions providers, and comes as the sector faces a critical turning point.
Across the UK financial advice landscape, firms share the common ambition to scale personalised, high-quality advice without sacrificing the human connection or the evidential rigour demanded by Consumer Duty.
With firms expected to be able to apply for permissions to offer Targeted Support from Spring 2026, the need for advice at scale, driven by innovative technologies, will become more pressing.
Yet firms face mounting pressures from technology fragmentation, regulatory complexity, and a widening expectation gap from clients.
“The landscape for financial advice has never been more dynamic or more promising,” said Mark Glover, Head of UK & Ireland Wealth Management, Ortec Finance. “Our research shows that firms want to innovate with confidence. They wish to be faster where they can, safer where they must, and always in a way that is explainable to both clients and compliance.
“Fundamentally, firms want to serve clients to the best of their ability. Today’s is a difficult landscape and retirement planning is increasingly complex. Firms must be armed with innovative technology to help them meet these challenges head on.”
Five innovations shaping the next generation of advice
The report distils interviews with nine senior decision-makers into five innovation themes that will define the next era of financial planning:
1. Evidence-As-You-Go
Firms want structured data capture, prompts, and auto-generated audit evidence built directly into the advice process, eliminating rekeying and reducing manual file checks.
2. Calibrated Cashflow
Leaders called for consistent assumptions, confidence ranges rather than single-line projections, and integrated stress-testing to avoid misleading levels of certainty for clients.
3. The Living Plan
Real-time outcomes monitoring – withdrawal rates, contribution gaps, cash buffers - is becoming essential, particularly for off-year review cycles and orphaned client books.
4. One Data Spine
Fragmented technology stacks are blocking progress. Firms emphasised the need for a consolidated data model with open access to ensure consistent MI, reduce errors, and enable scalable integration.
5. Glass-Box AI
Appetite for AI is high, but only if automation remains transparent, auditable, and integrated within existing workflows, avoiding the risks of black-box logic and sidecar tools.
Collectively, these innovations point to an industry seeking personalisation at scale, with technology augmenting, not replacing, the adviser’s role.
As one programme director from a national wealth manager noted, “controls work best when you’ve got structured data. As long as I can prove the link between client characteristics and product characteristics, it’s easy to evidence suitability.”
Yet despite these ambitions, decision-makers consistently cited blockers such as legacy technology, weak data models, complexity creep, and rising switching costs that slow progress.
“The best tools make processes and outcomes better not just faster,” said Heather Hopkins, Founder and CEO of NextWealth. “Advisers want more time with clients, more space to focus on the conversations that matter, and the ability to deliver better client outcomes consistently. This research provides a blueprint for the technologies and operating models that will support that future.”
Ortec Finance’s OPAL platform already embodies many of the principles outlined in the research, providing firms with:
- Institutional-grade economic modelling
- Dynamic, always-updated client plans
- Explainable and auditable projections
- Compliance-aligned workflows and monitoring
- Open, interoperable architecture
The firm continues to invest heavily in evidence-led planning solutions that allow financial advisers to deliver their services scale, so they can meet the increasingly complex retirement and investment needs of their clients. OPAL ensures a transparent line of sight from client data to recommendations to documented outcomes, at scale.
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