Sector blueprint · UK regulated financial advice

You charged 2,100 clients for an annual review.312 of them did not get one.

Calderwood Financial advises on investments, pensions, mortgages and protection from three offices in Yorkshire. Eighteen advisers, £480m under advice, and an ongoing fee on 2,100 clients worth £3.46m a year. 312 of those clients have not had a review in fourteen months or more, and the ongoing fees on them run to £512,400 a year. That is not lost revenue. It is revenue that may have to go back.

Then we build the same for your firm — with no commitment. The screens your team would use, in your language and your brand, linked up so you can walk your own process through them. Open it, show your team — if it's a fit, we'll make a detailed, priced proposal.

See your own screens See the screens
SectorDirectly authorised advice, UK
Fictional clientCalderwood Financial
Regulatory statusDirectly authorised, not an AR
In this study7 working screens
app.calderwood.example/service
Open the full screen
Ongoing service — the screen this study is built around
Mr & Mrs D Okonjo — clients since 2014 £412,000
£2,884 a year in ongoing fees · last review March 2024
01Annual review deliveredMar 2024
02Mortgage placedAug 2024
03Ongoing fee collected26 months
04Annual review due26 d late
05Suitability recordedNever
The first three steps happened because money moved and somebody chased them. The fourth has nobody waiting on it. £6,248 has been collected from this household since the review that fee pays for was last delivered.
Please read first

Calderwood Financial does not exist. We cannot show live client systems, so this study is built around a fictional firm — invented business, invented advisers, invented clients, invented figures. What is not invented is the work: the ongoing service obligation, the Consumer Duty outcomes, the certification regime and the failure modes are all real, and the screens are genuine working pages rather than pictures of pages. Every mockup on this page opens and responds to clicks.

What this is not: a back office, a platform, or a replacement for the system your advice already runs through. It does not hold client money, execute trades, produce valuations or replace your provider platforms, and it is not something you would swap your practice management system for. Displacing one of those is a far larger undertaking than this. Your platform, your CRM, your cashflow modelling and your accounts all stay exactly where they are.

What it is: the layer none of them owns — the review that was charged for and never delivered, the pension transfer file nobody signed off, the vulnerability flag with no recorded adjustment, and the certification that lapses on a Tuesday and stops somebody advising. Where a tool already does its job, we integrate with it rather than replace it.

On scope: Calderwood is modelled as a directly authorised firm rather than an appointed representative, because a DA firm carries the whole obligation itself with no principal checking its work. An appointed representative would need the same engine and a network oversight layer on top — that is a different study.

The brief

A firm that is very good at advice and has no idea what it owes

Calderwood does four things — investments, pensions, mortgages and protection — and does them well. What it cannot do is answer a simple question: which of its 2,100 ongoing clients is owed something today, and what happens if nobody goes near them. Four advice lines, four systems, and the obligations do not respect the line they came from.

Advisers
18
Paraplanners & support
10
Offices
3
Funds under advice
£480m
Clients on ongoing service
2,100
Blended ongoing fee
0.72%
Ongoing fee income
£3.46m
Reviews delivered in 12 months
1,788
Reviews overdue
312
Mortgage clients
940
Protection policies in force
1,380
Certified persons
18 + 4 senior managers
Vulnerability flags
214
Current systems
4 + spreadsheets
Where it breaks

Eight failures, and what each one actually costs

None of these is exotic. Every one is how a good advice firm accumulates a liability it did not know it had.

Nothing tracks whether the review actually happened The fee is a percentage of the client’s own wrapper, deducted by the platform automatically every month. The review is booked by a human who is busy. Only one of those two things fails quietly.
What it costs312 clients have gone fourteen months or more without a review they are paying for, and the fees on them run to £512,400 a year — collected automatically by the platform, every month, with nobody involved. It is refundable — typically with 8% simple interest a year from the date each fee was taken — and the firm carries the cost of proving which reviews did take place.
A pension transfer file sits unsigned while the client acts on the advice The advice has been given. What is missing is the record that says somebody competent checked it before it went out.
What it costsNine files are unsigned off and two are past the firm's own ninety-day limit. A defined benefit transfer is the single most expensive thing this firm does, it has to be signed off by a pension transfer specialist, and an unchecked file is the version that ends up in front of the Ombudsman.
The four advice lines cannot see each other Investments in one system, mortgages in another, protection in a third, and the client record in a fourth.
What it costsAn adviser opens a household knowing a third of it. The mortgage that completed last August does not appear next to the pension it was borrowed against, so the protection conversation that should follow never gets prompted.
A vulnerability flag is a tick box with nothing behind it Somebody records that a client is vulnerable. Nothing records what the firm did differently as a result.
What it costs41 of 214 flagged clients have no recorded adjustment. Under Consumer Duty the flag without the adjustment is worse than no flag at all — it proves the firm knew. The adjustment is the point: a client with cognitive decline needs a longer review slot and a different channel, and until that changes the task itself, nothing has actually changed.
Certification is an annual panic Eighteen certified persons, each needing a fitness and propriety assessment every twelve months, tracked in a spreadsheet nobody owns.
What it costsSix fall due in the next ninety days and two inside thirty. An adviser whose certificate lapses cannot advise the next morning — and the firm must not let them, because advice given by someone the firm has not certified is a breach of the certification regime. Every file they touch afterwards has to be revisited.
Consumer Duty evidence is written in the fortnight before the board meeting The board must attest annually that the firm delivers good outcomes. The evidence is assembled retrospectively, from memory.
What it costsWeeks of director time producing a document that describes what the firm believes happened rather than what it recorded. And the one outcome that fails — price and value — fails for the 312 reviews nobody delivered.
Protection is remembered rather than prompted There is no list of clients completing without a recorded protection conversation, so there is no way to catch one before completion.
What it costs18 cases are completing inside a fortnight with no conversation recorded. Every one is revenue not earned and a question the firm cannot answer if asked how it assesses protection need.
Mortgage offers expire in silence Once the offer is issued the adviser has moved on and the case sits with solicitors.
What it costs23 offers expire within thirty days, carrying £47,200 of procuration fees the firm has already done the work to earn, and clients re-applying at worse rates.
None of this needs new advisers, new platforms or a new proposition. Every failure above is a date nobody owned, a record nobody made, or a household split across four systems — and every one of them is a liability the system gives back.
The proposal

The fee creates the obligation, so the fee creates the task

Three ideas, and they replace four systems and a spreadsheet with one application that sits alongside the platforms you keep.

01 The household is the record

Investments, pension, mortgage and protection in one place, so an adviser who has never met them can pick up the phone informed — and the firm can see what it owes them.

02 Every fee taken raises the review it pays for

The ongoing fee and the ongoing service stop being tracked separately. The moment the fee is collected, the clock on the service it buys starts, with an owner and a date.

03 Evidence is recorded, not reconstructed

Outcomes, adjustments, sign-offs and certifications are captured as the work happens, so the board pack is a report rather than a fortnight of archaeology.

The screens

Seven screens. Every one of them real.

No screenshots, no slideware — each screen below is a working page, rendered live in its frame. Click a frame or its link to open the full screen in a new tab and use it.

01Dashboard 02Ongoing service 03Advice cases 04Client record 05Consumer Duty 06People & T&C 07Client portal
Operations

Dashboard

The view a principal actually needs: not how many clients there are, but which obligation needs a person today and what it costs if nobody goes near it. Eleven items across four advice lines, ordered by consequence rather than by what arrived last.

What it removesThe Monday meeting where eighteen advisers each report that everything is fine.
Open the full screen
app.calderwood.example/today
The signature

Ongoing service

The screen this study is built around. Every client paying an ongoing fee, and whether the review they paid for actually happened — sorted by how long they have been waiting, because that is the order the liability accrues in.

It also prices it. 312 clients, £512,400 a year of fees against them, and a breakdown by adviser showing that one of the eighteen carries 36 of them. That last number turns a spreadsheet problem into a supervision conversation.

Underneath sits the cohort that matters more: 96 clients reviewed ten to twelve months ago, not overdue yet. The 312 were all in this group once. A review booked at ten months costs a phone call; the same review at fifteen costs the fee back with interest and a file explaining why it slipped.

What it removesThe annual discovery that a tranche of clients has not been seen since the year before last.
Open the full screen
app.calderwood.example/service
Advice

Advice cases

Investments, pensions, mortgages and protection in one list. A case is not closed by time passing — it is closed by a decision somebody recorded, and the nine unsigned pension transfer files are visible here rather than at the next file check.

What it removesFour pipelines in four systems, and a pension transfer file nobody realised was still open.
Open the full screen
app.calderwood.example/cases
The record

Client record

Twelve years of a household in one place: every wrapper, every policy, every fee taken, and every review that was and was not delivered. The mortgage placed in August sits next to the pension it was borrowed against.

What it removesThe adviser who opens a file knowing a third of the household in front of them.
Open the full screen
app.calderwood.example/client
Oversight

Consumer Duty

The four outcomes, measured from what advisers actually recorded rather than assembled the week before the board meeting. Price and value is the one that fails, and it fails for exactly the reason the ongoing service screen shows.

The vulnerability register sits alongside it: 214 flags, and the 41 that have no recorded adjustment behind them.

What it removesA fortnight of director time spent describing what the firm believes happened.
Open the full screen
app.calderwood.example/duty
Oversight

People & T&C

Certification, competence and CPD for every person whose work needs signing off, with the dates that stop somebody advising. Six certifications fall due inside ninety days and two inside thirty.

What it removesThe annual certification panic, and the adviser who cannot advise on Monday.
Open the full screen
app.calderwood.example/people
Client-facing

Client portal

A second audience, so a second interface. The same record the adviser sees, in plain English — including, deliberately, that a review is overdue. A firm that shows the client the same clock it measures its advisers against has nowhere left to hide.

What it removesThe valuation request, and the sense that nobody is really holding the relationship.
Open the full screen
app.calderwood.example/portal
How we would build it

The ongoing service clock first, because that is the one with a refund attached

Four phases of two weeks each — eight weeks end to end. The fee-to-review clock goes live first, because every week it is not live is another month of fees collected against reviews nobody is tracking. Each phase ends with something the team actually uses, not a demo.

PHASE 1 · WEEKS 1–2

Discovery & data

  • Migrate households, policies and wrappers
  • Reconcile fees taken against reviews recorded
  • Agree what counts as a delivered review
  • Map the four advice lines to one record
PHASE 2 · WEEKS 3–4

The service clock

  • Fee collection raises the review it pays for
  • Owner, due date and escalation per client
  • Redress schedule for the historic gap
  • Adviser-level exposure reporting
PHASE 3 · WEEKS 5–6

Advice & evidence

  • Case pipeline across all four lines
  • Pension transfer sign-off gate
  • Protection conversation recorded before completion
  • Vulnerability flag with required adjustment
PHASE 4 · WEEKS 7–8

Oversight & rollout

  • Consumer Duty outcomes and board pack
  • Certification, competence and CPD
  • Client portal, one office first
  • Handover: source, database, credentials

Eight weeks is possible because most of it already exists. The engine underneath — the client and case records, document handling, approval limits, escalation rules, the portal — is running in production across five sectors. What actually gets built for an advice firm is the advice core: the fee-to-review clock, the sign-off gates, the outcome measures and whatever your own permissions require. That is the part this study is about, and the part we would spend the eight weeks getting right.

Not greenfield

The engine underneath is already in production

The difficult parts of this system exist and run today — they are just doing it for other sectors. Live platforms, with the same client and case records, document handling, approval limits, escalation rules and portal at the centre of each:

  • Medical tourism
  • Student management
  • Retrofit & remediation
  • Financial brokerage
  • Property management

That is why the working mockup is a realistic offer: we are not sketching a new product to sell you, we are showing you what the existing one would look like with your advice lines, your language and your brand on it — before any build begins.

Being straight with you

What is real here, and what is not

Real

  • The ongoing service obligation, and the fact that a fee taken for a review not delivered is refundable
  • The Consumer Duty outcomes, the vulnerability expectations and the annual board attestation
  • The SM&CR certification regime, and that a lapsed certificate stops somebody advising
  • The failure modes. All eight are drawn from how advice firms actually run
  • The screens themselves: working HTML, not images, built the way we build the real thing
  • Our track record. Sentient has built systems of this shape for medical tourism, student management, retrofit and remediation, financial brokerage and property management — live platforms across five sectors

Not real

  • Calderwood Financial, its advisers, its clients and its providers. All invented
  • Every figure on every screen. The numbers are constructed to be plausible, not measured
  • The outcomes. Every hour, pound and percentage on this page is an estimate constructed for the fictional firm — it illustrates the mechanism, and is not a measured result from any client
  • Any resemblance to a client. We do not show live client systems, which is precisely why this study exists
The offer

We would rather show you your own screens

This took a fictional advice firm and made its obligations visible. The same exercise works better with a real one — your advice lines, your language, your brand — and it costs you nothing to find out whether it is worth building.

1 Tell us how it runs

A conversation about your advice lines, your ongoing service proposition and where the obligations go unrecorded.

2 We build your screens

A working mockup of your own process — clickable, in your language and your brand.

3 You decide

Click through it with your team. If it's a fit, we'll come back with a detailed, priced proposal. If not, we part on good terms.

Start a conversation

Ready to see your own obligations in one list?

Tell us how your firm actually runs — your advice lines, your ongoing service proposition, your certification cycle, where the records go missing — and we'll show you how we'd build it. If it's a fit, we build your screens. No commitment — and a detailed, priced proposal only if you ask for one.

What happens next

  • We reply within one working day — a person who has read your note, not a bot.
  • If it's a fit, we build your mockup — the screens above, re-skinned to your advice lines and your brand.
  • You click through it before anyone commits — if it earns the build, we talk about that.

Every enquiry is confidential — we never share your details, and we never put client work on a website.

We only use your details to reply to this enquiry.

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