Pilot Results: What Happened When We Reviewed 10 Clients
Most IFA firms have a review backlog. It sits there because advisers are already at capacity. The compliance obligation is real. The business value is there. But the bottleneck is always the same: where do you find the hours?
Paterson Financial Planning faced exactly this problem. They have 200 clients in their lower-fee segment. Good relationships, solid compliance history, but below the threshold where direct adviser delivery made commercial sense. Annual reviews were overdue. The firm knew it. They just didn't know how to resource it without pulling advisers off revenue-generating work.
We ran a pilot to test whether a trained non-adviser, working inside their Intelliflo environment under their brand, could handle structured reviews safely. What we found surprised them.
What We Did
Pillar deployed a Client Service Manager to Paterson Financial Planning for 10 client reviews. This wasn't outsourcing to some offshore call centre. The CSM worked inside Intelliflo, on Paterson's network, under Paterson's brand. All data stayed in the firm's CRM. Every escalation decision was flagged same-day to the supervising adviser.
The process was structured. Each review followed the same framework: fact-find to identify changed circumstances, vulnerability screening as part of the review conversation, and a clear escalation rule. If anything emerged that needed financial advice, it went to the adviser immediately.
The CSM completed 10 reviews from the first wave of 25 contacts. That's a reasonable conversion rate for this type of outreach. No reviews were rushed. Each contact received proper attention.
What Happened
2 of those 10 reviews escalated to the adviser.
That 20% escalation rate matters less than what those escalations meant.
Review 1: A client flagged during the review conversation that they had received an inheritance. Their current portfolio was entirely in drawdown. The funds hadn't been optimised for their new circumstances. The adviser took the conversation, understood the situation, and identified a £350,000 new investment opportunity. Initial fee: 1%. Ongoing fee moved from £1,000 per year to £3,500 per year.
Review 2: Similar story. A client had sold a business. New liquidity. Current strategy no longer fit. The adviser was brought in. £250,000 new investment. 1% initial fee. Ongoing fee increased from £1,000 to £3,500 per year.
Both reviews generated documented escalation records. Both included vulnerability screening and compliance evidence. Both created genuine opportunities for advice.
The Numbers
This is where the model becomes interesting.
Pillar's cost for these 10 reviews was £450 per client. That's £4,500 for the cohort.
The revenue generated from the 2 escalations:
Client 1: £3,500 initial fee + £2,500 additional recurring fee = £6,000 Year 1 value. Client 2: £2,500 initial fee + £2,500 additional recurring fee = £5,000 Year 1 value. Total Year 1 value: £11,000.
That's a 2.4x return on the cost of all 10 reviews. From day one.
The other 8 reviews that didn't escalate? Those clients had their annual review completed. Vulnerability assessments were documented. Compliance evidence was captured. The audit trail exists. For a firm under Consumer Duty, that matters. You can't defend a gap in your review records. You can defend a record that shows a trained, supervised professional conducted a review and found no material change of circumstances.
The Compliance Outcome
This part is often overlooked by firms focused on the revenue side.
Under Consumer Duty, you need to demonstrate that you've understood each client's needs and reviewed whether your service remains suitable. You also need to show that you've identified vulnerable clients and adjusted your service accordingly.
The 10 reviews generated: 10 documented review records in the CRM, 10 vulnerability screening assessments, 2 escalation decisions with clear reasoning, 8 records of no material change properly documented, and a full audit trail for each client, time-stamped and attributed.
For a firm of Paterson's size, that's not a compliance footnote. That's evidence of a working, documented process. It's the difference between "we did reviews" and "we can show we did reviews properly."
What This Means at Scale
Paterson has 200 clients in this segment.
If the 20% escalation rate holds, that's 40 escalation opportunities per year across the full book. Forty conversations that go to a qualified adviser. Forty chances to identify changed circumstances, new investment, or advice gaps. Some will convert to revenue. Some won't. But all of them get the adviser's attention because they're flagged as matters requiring judgment.
The other 160 reviews are handled. Completed. Documented. Not adviser time, but not ignored either.
At scale, the economics shift again. The cost to Pillar per client drops as cohort size grows. The time freed for advisers compounds. The compliance evidence accumulates. The escalation rate itself becomes predictable and valuable.
The Reality
This wasn't a theoretical exercise. Paterson ran this with real clients, real money, and real regulatory exposure. They saw it work.
The pilot proves one thing clearly: if your review backlog exists because adviser capacity is the constraint, there's a way to move the needle without hiring. Not by cutting corners. By separating the work that needs adviser judgment from the work that doesn't, and deploying trained people to handle the second category safely.
The 20% escalation rate means four in five reviews generate no immediate adviser work. That's efficiency. The two that do are flagged immediately and handled properly. That's control.
And when those escalations turn into client conversations that generate £11,000 in revenue from ten reviews, the economics stop being a debate.
Next Steps
If your review backlog is growing and your advisers are the bottleneck, the pilot data suggests there's a better model.
Book a discovery call to explore whether a similar pilot could work for your firm.
