How open data can help close the advice gap | Insight from Moneyhub’s Dan Scholey

Closing the UK’s advice gap remains one of the industry’s biggest challenges, with millions still unable to access affordable financial guidance. In this guest article, Dan Scholey, chief product officer at Moneyhub, argues that open data and smarter technology could help advisers scale their expertise and bring personalised support to a much wider audience.

At a time when purchasing power is eroding due to inflation, millions of people in the UK still lack clarity in how best to realise their investment potential.

This failure of access to financial advice has real life consequences. In the UK in 2024, only 9% of adults received financial advice about pensions or investments. However, advised individuals were, on average, £47,000 better off over a 10-year period (in total wealth, including pensions) compared to those who didn’t receive advice. With people’s future financial security at stake, the government is keen to get more people invested, with initiatives like Consumer Duty and Targeted Support being introduced to achieve that aim. So why is the advice gap so persistent?

A structural fault line
The advice gap is not simply a matter of apathy from financial services organisations, but a structural fault line in the financial services landscape. The prohibitive cost is one major barrier: the average minimum investable asset requirement for a new client across many advice firms is almost £250k, pricing out vast swathes of the population. The other barrier is a lack of accessibility for a population that has rapidly changing needs from financial advice, and a lack of understanding about how to begin.

Moneyhub research shows that 47% of consumers want more personalised advice which represents the demand for tailored, technologically enabled engagement. Financial advisory services need to address the need for simplification to ensure data sharing is secure, consent-driven, and instantly accessible, empowering consumers with control to make informed decisions, particularly younger generations who remain under supported by traditional models.

But the current system is hindered by inefficiency. Fragmented data, complex regulatory hurdles and manual processes have made it overly time-consuming and costly to serve anyone but the highest net-worth clients. To close this gap and serve the mass market, financial organisations must move beyond the confines of manual advice and embrace technology that creates scalable, compliant, and client-centric solutions.

Open data as the catalyst for advisor amplification
There is some urgency for financial firms to make this shift. Without accessible, regulated alternatives, consumers are increasingly turning to unregulated sources like AI chatbots for financial guidance. These are tools powered by incomplete data and lacking proper oversight.

The difference for financial advisers is that their solutions should have open banking and smart data at the centre of the advice process. The solution isn’t to replace human advisors but to amplify their expertise. Firms can eliminate hours of manual data through a technological foundation which boosts operational efficiency and compliance. This, in turn, frees advisors to focus on high-value guidance, complex decisions, and genuine financial coaching.

This shift enables a new model of engagement. Rather than generic advice, firms can deliver truly personalised, proactive guidance based on a customer’s complete financial picture. When advisory platforms integrate with specialist capabilities – pension modelling tools, secure document management, and streamlined compliance checks – they create comprehensive ecosystems that provide the right support at the right moment. This isn’t about adding more technology for technology’s sake, it’s about building infrastructure that makes quality advice both scalable and affordable.

Fixing the advice gap needs to be more than just technological integration. It is a shift in mindset. It moves advice away from being an expensive, one-off transaction and turns it into a continuous, lifelong, personalised partnership. This approach enables advisory firms to meet the demands of the modern mass market consumer who increasingly expects the tailored, simplified, and flexible advice that technology can deliver. Only through the successful integration of human expertise and the responsible use of smart data can financial advisory firms achieve better financial outcomes for the majority, not the minority.