The number of financial advice firms planning to adopt new technology in the next 12 months has more than halved, new research from NextWealth has revealed.
The firm’s latest Advice Tech Stack: Adviser Reviews state of the nation report, showed only 13% of firms surveyed plan to add a new technology partner over the next year, down from 34% in both 2024 and 2025.
However, NextWealth said the shift doesn’t indicate a move away from technology, rather firms are intentionally slowing down the rate of adoption of new technology.
Heather Hopkins, founder and CEO of NextWealth, said: “It’s a deliberate strategy. Smaller firms describe consciously holding back rather than chasing every new development. Or as one sole trader we spoke to put it – I’d rather let bigger firms make the mistakes and I’ll just follow.”
The report also revealed that value for money has the strongest correlation to asset growth of any review measure, stronger than service, integration or willingness to recommend.
Hopkins said: “We wanted to understand whether user reviews correlate to asset growth and we found a positive relationship between the average user review score and asset growth. Integrations may be an ongoing source of frustration, and we’ve seen that persist from one report to the next, but perceptions of value are more likely to influence where advisers increase assets.”
As part of NextWealth’s research, financial advice professionals graded each component part in their firm’s tech stack, considering integrations with other tech, support provided, their willingness to recommend the tech and value for money.
Fundment was the highest-rated platform, sitting 0.28 points clear of second place. It is the only platform to score four or above on all criteria in the four years NextWealth has been measuirng this.
P1 came in second place, with a score of 4.55, and was the only other platform to score four or above on all four criteria. NextWealth said it was the fastest growing at 52% asset growth from a £1.4 billion asset base.
Quilter came third, with a rating of 4.12. The second largest platform in NextWealth’s sample by assets under advice, the firm rated four or above for value for money, support provided and willingness to recommend.
“Quilter, with £117.9 billion in assets under administration, is managing to deliver excellent tech and support at scale – that’s quite a feat,” Hopkins added.
The data in the Advice Tech Stack report was taken from surveys with a total of over 900 advice professionals, including advisers, financial planners, paraplanners and operations managers.
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