TL;DR: The UK has a major ‘advice gap’. Around 15.8 million adults need financial support but don’t get it. This is primarily due to high costs, the requirement to have assets worth a minimum of £250k, and complexity. Moneyhub tackles this by using Smart Open Data to replace the costly, manual fact-finding process with instant, secure data sharing. This ‘Advisor Amplification’ frees up human advisors to focus on high-value guidance. The successful partnership with WPS Advisory (LifeStage Money app) proves technology can dramatically lower the cost-to-serve, deliver compliant, targeted support, and make expert financial advice accessible to the mass market.
The statistics are stark.
According to a 2024 report from the FCA, an estimated 15.8 million UK adults may have needed support regarding financial products in the year prior, but did not receive it. An issue known as the advice gap, this is not simply a matter of apathy from financial services organisations. It is a structural fault line in the financial services landscape. The prohibitive cost is one major barrier: the average minimum investable asset requirement for a new client across many advice firms is almost £250k, pricing out vast swathes of the population. The other barrier is a lack of accessibility for a population that has rapidly changing needs from financial advice, and a lack of understanding about how to begin.
This failure of access has real life consequences. In the UK, only 9% of adults received financial advice about pensions or investments in 2024. As a result, only 39% of UK adults feel confident making long-term financial decisions on their own—a figure that is incompatible with the regulatory mandate of the Financial Services Consumer Duty, which demands firms deliver good outcomes for retail customers.
The current system is hindered by inefficiency. Fragmented data, complex regulatory hurdles, and manual processes have made it too time-consuming and costly to serve anyone but the highest net-worth clients. To close this gap and serve the mass market, financial organisations must move beyond the confines of manual advice and embrace technology that creates scalable, compliant, and client-centric solutions.
There is some urgency to this too because the alternative is people turn to unregulated and unrestricted alternatives such as ChatGPT, powered by inaccurate and incomplete data.
Open data as the catalyst for advisor amplification
Solutions at Moneyhub don’t replace the human advisor, but amplify their expertise. We’re doing this by helping institutions to place Smart Open Data at the centre of the advice process.
Our platform eliminates the most costly and inefficient step in traditional advice: the fact-finding process. Through Smart Fact Find end-users securely and instantly consent to share a comprehensive, real-time view of their financial universe—accounts, pensions, investments, and debts. This eliminates the hours of manual chasing and data entry that often burden both client and advisor, significantly boosting operational throughput and compliance.
This is the transformative power of Smart Open Data. It frees the human advisor to focus on high-value guidance, complex emotional decisions, and true financial coaching.
Driving transformation and real life outcomes with WPS Advisory
Moneyhub’s work with WPS Advisory on the enhanced LifeStage Money app perfectly illustrates how our API-first platform drives commercial and client transformation.
WPS Advisory recognised that building financial confidence means supporting their clients’ employees across their entire life journey, not just as they approach retirement. By embedding Moneyhub’s platform, they achieved three critical commercial and customer outcomes:
- Convenience and control: The Lifestage Money app provides a single, comprehensive view of finances. This empowers consumers with control to make informed decisions. It also addresses the need for simplification, especially when 47% of consumers say they want more personalised advice. The data sharing is secure, consent-driven, and instantly accessible.
- Commercial efficiency: By integrating the Smart Fact Find, WPS Advisory has streamlined the financial fact-finding process for advisers. Accessing client data with Smart Fact Find takes an average of one minute and 42 seconds, compared to a 45 minute call. This dramatically lowers the cost-to-serve and enables clients to offer services to a much broader market including younger generations that are often undersupported.
- Targeted Support: Fine grained segmentation based on clear rules allows the firm to seamlessly deliver efficient and effective Targeted Support— which is proactive, with data-driven nudges and actionable guidance that reflects a customer’s full financial reality. The platform is augmented by integrations with specialist partners like Guiide (pension modelling), Legado (secure digital vault for documents), and SmartSearch (streamlined AML/KYC compliance), creating a holistic and compliant embedded trusted finance ecosystem with full advice exactly when it is needed
The enhancements that WPS Advisory have made move advice away from being an expensive, one-off transaction and turns it into a lifelong, personalised partnership. The team at Moneyhub is proud to support them in demonstrating that the future of financial advice is accessible and centred around the delivery of advice to drive superior client outcomes. We believe the successful integration of human expertise and the responsible use of smart data is the only path to achieving better financial outcomes for the majority, not the minority.
The time for transformation is now
At Moneyhub we invite advisory firms ready to close the advice gap to explore how Moneyhub’s solutions can radically reduce your cost-to-serve and amplify your advisers’ impact. Contact us today to begin your transformation journey.
About the author
Dan Scholey is Chief Product Officer at Moneyhub. Hailing from Bristol, UK, he’s been deeply engrained in the finance industry for over twenty years, and was heavily involved in making the first ever Open Banking payment. These days, you’ll probably find Dan turning cutting-edge products into sustainable, scalable business uses that generate real impact.
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