A day of pension reviews can leave a remarkably long paper trail. At Manchester’s Christian Douglass Group, two advisers would normally need at least two weeks to finish the follow-up. In March 2026, the firm tried intelliflo’s IQ Engagement Assistant on a full day of meetings. The work was finished within a week, including careful manual checking, according to a customer account published by intelliflo in September.
The team had been sceptical. “The whole office was surprised,” financial adviser Harry Hartill recalled. The task was familiar: gather notes, update client information and prepare the documents that follow a conversation. AI made a difference because its output could flow into the firm’s existing records. A transcript alone would have left much of that work waiting.
That is a useful introduction to intelliflo, a company whose business sits in the space between a financial conversation and a completed client file. Its pitch concerns time: how much advisers spend collecting information, moving it between systems and proving that the right things happened. The client may remember the retirement discussion. Someone still has to finish the forms.
The work behind the advice
Founded in 2004 by Nick Eatock and Akeel Ahmed, intelliflo sells cloud software to financial advice businesses. Eatock remains CEO; Ahmed is CTO. Its central product, intelliflo office, combines customer relationship management with financial planning, documents, workflow tracking, valuations and income administration. Independent advisers, wealth managers and networks use it to run the daily business of advice.
The company reports more than 29,000 advice professionals using its technology across the UK and Australia, representing over 2.2 million end clients and approximately £505 billion in assets under advice. Those assets belong in the context of its customers’ work. They are not a portfolio intelliflo itself manages. The distinction separates this software company from the investment houses whose names appear on client statements.
Its expertise is unusually specific. A conventional sales database can remember a customer’s telephone number. Advice software also needs to connect financial circumstances, plans, reviews, fees and the evidence behind recommendations. intelliflo’s value depends on whether those pieces remain usable together as a client’s life changes.
- 01Collect
Facts & goals - 02Plan
Scenarios & advice - 03Act
Accounts & documents - 04Review
Changes & follow-up
A simplified view of the connected advice process, not a prescribed sequence for every firm.
The filing cabinet was already losing
Long before the AI announcements, customers were finding value in less glamorous changes. TNS Financial Services had been managing a large legacy client book through paper processes. Finding a benefit statement could involve searching physical files under slightly different names. Its operations director, Jenny Belham, brought previous experience of intelliflo when she joined in September 2023.
TNS transferred electronic information and gathered plan data from providers, then scanned ongoing clients’ paper records during annual reviews. Consultancy Jigsaw Tree helped map processes, configure cases and build document templates. This was a phased operational project, with people doing the sorting and configuration.
The published comparison reported an 80% time saving for the prospect process, 43% for onboarding and 97% for bulk communication. Annual reviews improved by 18%. The spread matters: a repeatable mailing task offers a different opportunity from a review involving judgement and conversation. The useful lesson is to measure individual jobs before applying one percentage to an entire practice.
Same software. Different savings.
Atkins Bland offers another practical example. During onboarding, its team learned to configure workflows around its own processes. Staff could subsequently refine tasks and wording themselves. Income tracking also moved from internal spreadsheets into office, where advisers could see payments after statements were posted and matched. The improvement came from making the system part of ordinary work, then adjusting it.
A portal with a succession plan attached
At Cansquared, founder Geoff Matthews began using intelliflo office in early 2020. The client portal helped him operate remotely during the pandemic, but it also changed the meeting itself. Clients could supply basic information beforehand, leaving more room to discuss what they wanted their money to do.
Matthews made the portal part of the first meeting, demonstrated it and followed up with registration instructions. Some clients needed help. In the 2024 account, he said he had stopped completing paper fact finds after more than 40 years of doing so. The technology was also useful to his son Richard, a newly qualified adviser who lived more than an hour away and was preparing eventually to take over the practice.
The portal is included in intelliflo office as standard. Firms can apply their own identity, exchange documents, collect updated information and let clients view financial details from their devices. That makes it a client-facing part of the service. Its effectiveness still depends on the introduction, the support and whether the client actually uses it.
Make the future visible, then deal with the application
Cashflow modelling gives the same collection of client facts another purpose. Advisers can compare scenarios involving retirement, spending, inflation or investment growth and show how changed assumptions affect the picture. intelliflo includes this functionality at no extra cost within office, with links to records and the portal. The graph offers a way to discuss possibilities; its usefulness rests on the assumptions supplied.
Once a plan becomes an application, wealthlink connects office to the SS&C Wealth Platform. Advisers can open and service investment accounts from the familiar software, carrying information through instead of entering it again. In a July 2026 interview, Beacon Wealth Management’s senior paraplanner and team leader Caroline Seagrave described fewer errors as details passed from fact find to illustration to application.
The commercial distinctions deserve attention. The core business is software licensing to advice firms. IQ assistants cost extra. The investment platform accessed through wealthlink has a separate charging structure: its published fees start at 0.15% and decrease with investment size. That percentage is a platform charge, not the price of an intelliflo office licence.
The software subscription is only the start
intelliflo’s store lists more than 140 integrations. These include provider valuation feeds, cash-management services and specialist tools such as Recordsure’s ReviewAI. Customers can extend the central system around their own work. That breadth is part of intelliflo’s position in the market, although a long directory does not establish how well a particular combination will serve a particular practice.
Iress Xplan is a direct alternative, with its own financial planning, workflows, reporting and open integrations. Connected software is therefore a competitive requirement rather than an exclusive intelliflo invention. A meaningful comparison would follow a real client case through each product: what is entered, what transfers, what needs correcting and what the client sees.
intelliflo also measures adoption through its eAdviser index, developed in 2018. Firms receive scores across six areas, including data quality, document design and activity management. Its cohorts run from Explorers to Champions. The company reports higher recurring revenue and more clients per adviser among heavier users. These are comparisons between groups, not proof that switching on a feature causes revenue to rise.
The implication for buyers is practical: budget time for migration, configuration and staff learning alongside the licence. A system can contain useful capabilities that nobody has incorporated into the working day. Atkins Bland’s ability to edit its own workflows is a more transferable habit than any promise that purchasing software will automatically produce growth.
New owner, narrower geography
Investors have followed this business for years. HgCapital Mercury made a majority investment in 2013; its annual report recorded a £43 million enterprise value. Hg sold intelliflo to Invesco in 2018. In August 2025, Carlyle and Invesco announced a further acquisition agreement, with consideration of up to $200 million: $135 million at closing and as much as $65 million in future earn-outs.
The announcement also separated the US subsidiaries into a standalone business called RedBlack, with separate management. intelliflo would focus on the UK and Australia. Its current website identifies Carlyle as owner. Historical descriptions of one global product group can therefore obscure the business being sold to advisers today.
The company’s stated purpose is to widen access to financial advice. Its careers material describes collaboration, personal growth and experimentation. The public product process offers a concrete expression of that ambition: its 2026 event update says customer feedback informed redesigned tasks and workflows. For advisers, that kind of responsiveness is easiest to judge in the screens they use every morning.
The next test is a complete client file
intelliflo’s next-generation roadmap puts configurable screens and AI-driven workflows at the centre of office. The distinction between delivery and intention is clear on its current pages: IQ Engagement is live; Advice, Quality, Compliance, Letters of Authority and Pre-Meeting Preparation assistants are still labelled coming soon. Buyers should assess the available product separately from that proposed expansion.
Engagement can extract information into more than 250 record fields, with the adviser approving changes. This approval step belongs inside the efficiency calculation. So do corrections, client preferences about recording and the time needed to finish the file. A firm with inconsistent records or an unsuitable workflow should test those conditions directly before assuming the same savings.
Measure the finished file.
The practical test for an advice-software trial
Count the checking time.
The experiments worth copying are modest enough to run: map a recurring task, try the software on real work, review the output and compare the full process. Introduce the portal properly. Teach someone to maintain the workflows. Keep track of where people still have to type information twice. intelliflo’s case becomes persuasive at that level of detail. An adviser’s recovered afternoon needs fewer promises than an AI revolution.