The Deep dive: Surge in AI use among UK financial advisers

By Puja Sharma

The deep dive’ is our bi-weekly exploration of a relevant topic, hot trend, or new product. For Prime subscribers only.

How does it work?

AI use among UK financial advisers jumps from 43% to 74% in a year.

The 2026 intelliflo UK Advice Efficiency Survey reveals AI adoption is transforming advice delivery, with three in four now using it. However, fragmented systems and integration gaps are still preventing firms from unlocking the full efficiency benefits AI could deliver.

AI adoption has risen from 43% to 74% in twelve months, according to the 2026 UK Advice Efficiency Survey. The market-wide survey of 209 advice professionals also points to persistent operational challenges, with fragmented technology and poor integration continuing to drain firms’ resources and affect client outcomes.

Who is under the radar?

• AI adoption accelerates

Use of AI within advice firms has risen 31 percentage points in a year, from 43% in 2025 to 74% in 2026, with firms applying AI to manual administrative work rather than to advice itself. Among AI users, note-taking and transcription are the most common applications (87%), followed by report writing at 44%.

Report writing still consumes most adviser time

Report writing is the most time-intensive task, reflected in the 44% applying AI to it. Nearly a third (30%) of advisers spend three or more hours per report and one in ten (10%) spend over five hours, making it an obvious place to win back time.

• Fragmented systems remain the leading operational problem

Three-fifths (60.7%) of firms run five or more core systems and 57% juggle four or more investment platforms. More than two-thirds (68%) cite manual data entry as their biggest challenge and 63% report poor system integration. Almost two-fifths (38%) see data errors in 11 or more out of every 100 client cases, affecting service quality and increasing compliance risk

Digital aspiration outpaces execution

Over three-fifths (62%) of advisers want near-complete digital workflows (81 to 100%), yet fewer than half (48%) currently have minimal paper use of 0 to 20%, a modest improvement on 43% in 2025. The top priorities for digitisation are system integration (51%), digital signatures (50%) and online fact-finding (48%), which ease current pain points, rather than reimagine how advice is delivered.

• Advisers rate workflows only moderately efficient on average

The survey also asked advice professionals to rate how efficient they believe current financial advice journey workflows are on a scale of one to ten, with one being not at all efficient and ten being extremely efficient. The average efficiency rating stands at a moderate 6.23 out of 10, with only a quarter (25%) of advisers rating their workflows as highly efficient (8+). Three-quarters (75%) of advisers feel their current processes limit their ability to deliver good client outcomes to some degree, reflecting the gap between firms’ digital aspirations and operational reality.

• Professional growth ambitions contrast with personal wellbeing goals

If more streamlined processes and improved efficiency freed up advisers’ time, two-thirds (66%) would serve more clients and nearly half (47%) would focus on business development, while fewer than one in five (17%) would move to a four-day working week.

Why does it matter now?

Nick Eatock, CEO of intelliflo, said, “Our 2026 Advice Efficiency Survey shows the advice profession has made up its mind on AI, with adoption jumping from 43% to 74% in a year. But firms are bolting these tools onto infrastructure that’s already fragmented. Efficiency sits at just 6.23 out of 10, and three-quarters of advice professionals say their processes limit the client outcomes they can deliver. There’s a clear business case for modern, integrated solutions, like wealthlink and intelliflo IQ, which put an end to rekeying the same client data again and again. Advisers told us they want to grow their client base and build their business. Done well, technology lets them do both.”