Additionally, US-based XLR8, another Saleforce-based dedicated financial advice solution with a small but significant number of UK customers. Wealthbox is another American player that is regularly used by UK advisers, but it is not based on Salesforce.
Zoho is again a broad-based CRM solution picking up UK adviser customers while not explicitly adapted for the financial advice sector. This is due, at least in part, to the efforts of Eileen Murphy of adviser CRM deployment specialists Informed Training. If you are going for one of the US tools that may mean that you will not get the level of integration with other UK advice tech providers, but some firms prefer the more specialist CRM functionality, especially in areas like protection where there are not really any dedicated practice management systems. That said both XLR8 and Wealthbox have an impressive range of third-party integrations into other specialist advicetech in the US so, if they get sufficient traction in the UK, I would expect them to follow a similar path.
When it comes to Microsoft Dynamics the two most active software suppliers embracing this platform are Morningstar and Time4Advice. I should also mention Openwork are using Dynamics to build their Concert Hub.
For many years, Morningstar have been an advicetech powerhouse in the US where no fewer than two thirds of all advisers used their portfolio research software. In the UK, by comparison their offering has been limited and had an equally limited market share. There are major signs that this is changing.
Over the past few years Morningstar have made some notable software acquisitions outside the US, particularly the non-Australian assets of the Praemium business which include the Wealthcraft, Microsoft Dynamics/Power Platform based CRM proposition and their own investment platform, plus Finametrica, one of the most popular risk profiling engines with UK advisers, the Sustainalytics ESG risk rating tool, and Adviser Logic a financial planning tool originally from Australia. The company is now building an international division dedicated to supporting advisers outside the US and particularly in the UK, Australia and South Africa.
With their outstanding credentials, and having assimilated such impressive third-party solutions, Morningstar appear to have all the right assets to become a major player in the UK market over the next few years. So far, I have not yet had the chance to do as deep a dive as I would like into Wealthcraft, but the potential is clearly enormous.
Time4Advice, who were bought by Transact in 2021, are mid-way through their transformation to the Power Platform. When they were bought there was expected to be some very deep integration into Transact; it was my understanding that this would also be used as learning by Transact for integrating to other platforms. This has not moved forward as far as I might have expected. Time4Advice concede that they have had some deployment issues around new clients in recent years.
