A quiet but consequential problem is emerging in UK wealth management. It has nothing to do with advice quality or investment performance. Instead, it lies in the operational machinery behind the scenes — the systems advisers rely on to make sense of increasingly complex client portfolios. And as private markets and tax‑efficient investments become part of the everyday planning toolkit, those systems are starting to creak. With clients increasingly expecting personalised, insight‑rich experiences, these gaps are becoming impossible to ignore.
Adviser firms of all sizes, from boutique IFAs to national wealth managers — are facing the same challenge: they are growing, but their operational infrastructure is not. Consolidators are acquiring at record pace, assets under management continue to rise, yet the technology underpinning these firms still resembles the patchwork stacks built 15 or 20 years ago. Much of the industry’s plumbing simply wasn’t built for the data volume, complexity or regulatory scrutiny of 2026.
“It becomes obvious very quickly how many different parties are involved in a single private‑markets transaction,” says Daniel Rodwell, CEO of GrowthInvest. “And what stands out is how few of those systems speak the same data language. When you’re working with those disparate datasets day in, day out, you realise just how significant the integration gap has become.”
What was once a niche challenge in tax‑efficient investing has quietly become one of the biggest operational constraints across wealth management.
A Market Evolving Faster Than Its Technology
The UK’s private‑wealth channel is now estimated at over $450 trillion globally, and private‑market exposure — long the preserve of institutions — is increasingly relevant to retail portfolios. Regulatory developments like ELTIF 2.0 and the UK’s Long‑Term Asset Fund (LTAF) are accelerating access. Evergreen structures are replacing traditional drawdown models, making private‑market funds more accessible and more suitable for a broader range of investors. Yet the infrastructure required to support this shift is years behind.
Unlike listed assets, where data flows relatively cleanly between platforms, custodians and back‑office systems, private‑market data arrives from all directions: quarterly valuation PDFs, emailed corporate actions, unstructured fund‑manager files, inconsistent transaction histories and differing custodian interpretations of the same asset. Advisers are left stitching together an incomplete picture — sometimes manually.
This fragmentation is magnified during high‑pressure periods such as VCT season, when thousands of applications must be processed at speed despite data‑source inconsistency. Many advisers simply accept the friction because the market has never offered an integrated alternative.
A Specialist Platform Built for a Complex Market
That was the gap GrowthInvest set out to fill. Founded specifically to address the operational pain points of tax‑efficient and alternative investments, the firm built a proprietary, integration‑first platform designed to consolidate and standardise complex private‑markets data for advisers and wealth managers.
“It felt strange to me that there was no platform delivering the efficiencies mainstream systems offered — but tailored to tax‑efficient and private‑markets investing,” Rodwell recalls. “We kept meeting advisers who faced exactly the same operational problems. That was the moment GrowthInvest was born.”
Under CTO Aled Treharne — whose telecoms background brought deep experience of high‑volume, multi‑party integration and real‑time resilience — the company rebuilt its technology architecture from the ground up. The result is a platform designed not just to display private‑market data, but to ingest, normalise, reconcile and distribute it seamlessly across adviser systems.
This integration‑first design has become one of GrowthInvest’s core differentiators.
The Integration Moment: FINIO, Intelliflo and the Industry’s First Clean Data Feed
One of the most significant developments came with GrowthInvest’s partnership with Sprint Enterprise’s FINIO data hub and leading adviser back‑office systems such as Intelliflo Office. For the first time, advisers can now manage and report on their clients’ alternative and tax‑efficient investments inside their existing systems, receiving a standardised, accurate dataset without manual intervention.
“Access to standardised and accurate portfolio data across private‑market and tax‑efficient assets has long been a problem for advisers,” Rodwell noted. “This partnership is a landmark moment — it finally brings these assets into advisers’ core systems.”
The integration covers VCTs, EIS, SEIS, BPR/IHT services and a growing universe of private‑market funds including private equity, venture capital, private credit and infrastructure. Behind the scenes, GrowthInvest has consolidated hundreds of data files from fund managers and custodians — many never previously available via UK platforms.
Sprint Enterprise’s CEO, Robin Bevan, described it as “a significant step forward for advisers”, citing the combination of FINIO’s data‑engineering capabilities and GrowthInvest’s deep product expertise.
Data Clarity, Liquidity Insight and the Adviser Experience
Integrations alone don’t solve advisers’ day‑to‑day challenges. What matters is the outcome — the quality of the data that appears inside planning tools and back‑office systems.
GrowthInvest has focused heavily on turning previously opaque areas of private markets into structured, actionable insight. Its VCT Maturity Report and Buy‑Back Calendar transform unpredictable liquidity events into a coherent forward‑planning framework. Advisers can now anticipate sell‑back windows, manage reinvestment cycles and design personalised VCT strategies based on clean, consolidated, real‑time information.
“Our goal has always been simple,” says Rodwell. “Take something historically messy and make it predictable, transparent and adviser‑friendly — giving clients clarity they’ve never had before.”
The Coming Private‑Markets Shift — And Why Infrastructure Will Decide Who Wins
The private‑markets landscape is entering a period of major transformation. Evergreen structures are broadening access. Global managers are seeking credible distribution partners. And advisers are relying more heavily on alternatives to support diversification, tax planning and long‑term wealth strategies. But to unlock this next wave, the infrastructure must catch up.
Consolidation across adviser groups means firms now hold thousands of historic private‑market positions — often inconsistent, incomplete or scattered across legacy systems. GrowthInvest’s technology, coupled with its analyst and consultancy teams, is now being used to standardise these portfolios, deliver clarity for Consumer Duty and provide a single view across entire networks.
“We are now delivering transparency, value and insight on previously disparate portfolios within days,” Rodwell says. “That simply wasn’t possible even two years ago.”
Partnerships like GrowthInvest’s with Allfunds, giving advisers access to global private‑market managers through a seamless digital process, demonstrate how infrastructure innovation is accelerating distribution opportunities.
“The advantage of owning our own technology is that we don’t have the operational friction of legacy platforms, often restricted by daily dealing and pricing constraints” Rodwell adds. “We were able to make a decision and quickly implement the technology required to handle capital calls, redemptions, and dsitributions as part of the life-cycle driven models of private markets funds – the areas that traditional platforms struggle with.”
Infrastructure as Competitive Advantage
As the wealthtech landscape becomes more crowded, the winners will not be those with the widest product shelf, but those with the strongest infrastructure — the cleanest data, the deepest integrations and the clearest adviser workflows.
Private markets are the ultimate stress‑test. They expose the weaknesses of legacy architecture and reward platforms that can create order, structure and predictability in one of the industry’s most complex asset classes.
GrowthInvest’s thesis is simple: if private markets are going to scale within UK wealth management, someone must fix the plumbing.
And increasingly, advisers are choosing partners who can do exactly that.
The Wealthtech 100 2026, published a shorter version of this article in April 2026. Please click here to see our 2026 combined content and entry.