The Wake-Up Call
Petronella West had seen it all. As CEO of Investment Quorum, she had weathered market crashes, regulatory shakeups, and the everyday battles of running a successful wealth firm. But it was only when she took a closer look at her tech stack that the most sobering realisation hit home.
They were paying £40,000 a year to a back-office system, and yet—shockingly—they didn’t even own their own client data. “I realised Intelliflo owned the data,” she said. “So we walked.”
That decision marked a turning point. Instead of relying on restrictive third-party software, they built their own CRM using Notion. Suddenly, they had full visibility and control. Their investment team could plug into it. Compliance ran smoother. Staff onboarding became seamless. Their business became more resilient—because they finally had their data working for them.
It’s a story we hear too often, though not always with the same bold ending. For most firms, data remains at arm’s length—out of reach, out of sync, and out of their control.
You Can’t Scale What You Don’t Own
What if the greatest risk to your business isn’t regulation or revenue pressure—but not having full access to your own data?
Many wealth firms are trying to future-proof their businesses while still relying on legacy systems that lock away the very asset they need to grow: structured, accessible, client-owned data. That’s not just inefficient—it’s fundamentally unsustainable.
How Wealth Firms Are Held Back
We speak to wealth managers daily who are stuck in this trap. They’re growing firms—ambitious, client-focused, deeply aware of their responsibilities under Consumer Duty. But their platforms are working against them.
The problem isn’t always visible at first. It starts as a small irritation: a reporting delay here, a manual workaround there. But dig deeper, and you’ll find the same pattern. Disconnected systems. Data stored across multiple platforms. No single source of truth.
In some cases, even exporting your own client records becomes a painful request process. Worse, some providers treat your data like their intellectual property. That’s not just frustrating—it’s dangerous.
If you can’t access your own data, how can you automate workflows? Prove outcomes? Build scalable processes? You can’t.
And so you end up relying on increasingly fragile manual processes—spreadsheets, back-and-forth emails, one-off integrations that break the moment anything changes.
All while regulatory expectations are rising and clients expect faster, smarter service.
It’s no way to run a business.
Data Ownership Isn’t Optional—It’s Critical
Here’s the shift: owning your data isn’t a tech decision. It’s a business-critical strategy.
Investment Quorum’s story makes that clear. By taking back control, they’ve created an internal system that powers everything from compliance to investments to HR. They didn’t wait for the perfect tech stack—they prioritised ownership and built from there.
This is the mindset wealth firms need. Your CRM isn’t just a place to store notes. It’s the brain of your business. And if you don’t own that brain—if it lives in a provider’s black box—you’ll always be on the back foot.
What firms need is a golden source of structured data: a single, central environment that speaks to every system in your business. One source of truth that enables real-time insights, seamless integrations, and confident decision-making.
This isn’t some futuristic vision. It’s what the smartest firms are already building—and what the rest must adopt if they want to remain competitive.
How to Reclaim Control of Your Platform and Data
If you’re still battling your platform to get the basics done, here’s how to begin moving towards autonomy and scalability:
Your Platform Shouldn’t Hold You Back
Petronella West didn’t just move systems—she rewired the way her business thinks about technology. It wasn’t about chasing innovation. It was about taking control.
Your firm can do the same.
Whether you’re a DFM, a consolidator, a family office, or a fast-scaling IFA—your data is your most valuable asset. If you don’t own it, you’re always going to be limited in what you can deliver for clients and how far you can scale.
It’s time to stop settling. You deserve infrastructure that reflects the ambition and quality of your firm.
At Graphene, we’ve built our platform with exactly that in mind.
So ask yourself:
Are you running your platform—or is it running you?
Let’s fix that.
