I added up what adviser software really costs. New advisers are paying through the nose before they've signed a single client.

The bill nobody warns you about

When you go independent, everyone warns you about the regulatory side — the permissions, the PI cover, the compliance support. Far fewer people warn you about the software, and that's the bit that quietly eats your first year.

Here's the shape of it. You need somewhere to keep client records and run your back office — a CRM. The newer, more transparent players have started publishing real numbers: Plannr, for instance, has been reported at around £140 per licence a month. That's the honest end of the market. Most of the established names — Intelliflo's Intelligent Office, Iress Xplan, moneyinfo, Time4Advice's CURO — don't publish a price at all. You book a demo, tell them about your firm, and a quote comes back, usually with a minimum, an onboarding fee, and an annual contract.

And the CRM is rarely the whole story. Most firms pay, separately, for a client portal, a cashflow planner (Voyant or CashCalc), and a suitability-report writer (Genovo). Each was bought to do one job. None of them really share a live picture of the client. Stack them up and a "proper" setup runs comfortably into three figures per seat per month — before you've onboarded a single client, and before anyone's paid you a fee.

It isn't only the price. It's the opacity.

The number stings, but the thing that actually got under my skin when I started digging was how hard it is to even find out. "Book a demo." "Let's understand your requirements." Minimum seat counts. Annual commitments. Onboarding fees that land before you've sent a client a single login.

For an established firm with a full book, fine — it's a rounding error and the sales dance is bearable. But put yourself in the shoes of someone who handed in their notice three weeks ago and has a pipeline of maybe a dozen warm clients. Being asked to sign an annual contract for software you haven't really used, with a setup fee on top, is a genuinely off-putting way to start. It's priced for the firm you hope to be in five years, not the one you are this month.

Why I ended up building the adviser side

I didn't set out to build anything for advisers. WealthR started as a consumer app — a clean way for ordinary people to see their whole financial life in one place: net worth, pensions, the retirement plan, a forecast. Then advisers started emailing. They'd found it, liked it more than the portal their firm pays for, and asked the same question in different words: "can I put my clients in this, under my brand?"

So we built that. The client logs into a portal in your firm's colours, on their phone or laptop — their net worth and trend, their household, their latest review, their to-do list, a two-way chat. You get an adviser workspace to run the whole book. And the two talk to each other: a client updates a figure, it lands with you as pending, you approve it in a click, and it writes back to their plan with your name and the date on it. Between annual reviews the picture stays current — which, conveniently, is exactly the kind of ongoing-value evidence Consumer Duty asks you to keep.

What it is — and what it deliberately isn't

Let me be straight about the boundaries, because over-claiming helps nobody. WealthR is not a replacement for your CRM, your back office, your custody arrangements, your suitability-report writer or your compliance workflow. That's your regulated stack and it should stay exactly where it is. WealthR is the layer that's usually the weakest and the most visible to clients: the experience they actually log into, and the day-to-day planning work around it.

What you get for the seat price is the branded portal, an adviser dashboard and client book, a business-intelligence view of your AUM and your book, the two-way figure updates with one-click approval, reviews, action plans, a two-way client chat with a notification bell, an engagement centre that flags who's gone quiet, and a "showcase mode" that lets you hand a prospect the laptop and walk the whole thing on sample data without ever touching a real client's record. Unlimited clients per seat.

The client's side — in your brand, on their phone, with a chat to you built in.

How to actually start lean

If you're going independent right now, here's the honest version of what I'd do, and it isn't "buy everything on day one." You do not need the thousand-pound-a-month stack before you have the clients to put on it. You need two things first: a way for clients to see and update their plan, and a place for you to run the book. Almost everything else can wait until the fees are coming in and you actually know which heavyweight tools you'll lean on.

That's the gap WealthR is built for. Twenty-nine pounds a seat, a month, unlimited clients, no setup fee, no minimum, no long contract — sign up yourself and you can be live the same day, branded for your firm, with your first client logging in that afternoon. Add the serious back-office and suitability tools when the book justifies them. Start with the bit your clients actually see and judge you on.

Where this is going — and what isn't built yet

I'd rather tell you what's coming than pretend it's already here. A document vault — for sharing suitability reports and review packs, and collecting documents back — is in build. So are meeting-prep tools that assemble an agenda and follow-ups from the client's live plan, and an adviser planning module (cashflow, scenarios, drawdown ordering) running on the same UK tax engine that already powers the consumer app. Some of those will likely be optional add-ons on top of the seat price, so you only pay for what you switch on. None of them are live today, and I won't list them as if they are. What's on the advisers page right now is what works today.

The bigger idea, if I'm honest about where my head is: the navigation already reads less like a CRM and more like an operating system — Home, Messages, Business, Engagement. Over time, planning, documents and meeting prep become apps inside that, not separate logins you stitch together every review. That's the version of "everything in one place" I actually believe in.

Frequently asked

This is a personal account and general information, not financial, tax or business advice. Software prices quoted are as publicly reported or described at the time of writing and change often — check current pricing with each provider directly. Product names (Intelliflo, Intelligent Office, Iress, Xplan, moneyinfo, CURO, Time4Advice, Voyant, CashCalc, Genovo, Plannr) are trademarks of their respective owners, used here only as common examples of the UK adviser stack; WealthR is not affiliated with any of them. WealthR is a planning and client-experience tool, is not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority, and does not provide regulated advice — your firm's regulated activities remain with your firm.