Best financial adviser CRM and back office software in the UK (2026)
intelliflo office, Plannr, CURO, Xplan, Salesforce and the smaller options, with published prices, fit by firm size and how new appointments get into each one.
On this page
We don't run an IFA back office ourselves, so for this comparison we've gone to each vendor's published pricing and product pages, trade press and the adviser tech research that exists, all checked on 27 September 2026. Where we're relying on what vendors say rather than hands-on use, we say so.
Every extra system you log into is another place for client data to go out of date. A CRM, a research tool and a compliance portal run side by side can easily hold the same client three times with three different phone numbers. So a useful test for any IFA system is how much of the work from first meeting to annual review happens inside it.
What should a financial adviser CRM actually do?
For a UK advice firm the list is longer than for a mortgage broker, because you're servicing clients for years, not completing a case and moving on. The non-negotiables:
- Client and household records. Every client, partner, pension, plan and document, searchable and linked. Pension clients typically hold several pots, so plan-level records matter.
- Provider feeds and valuations. Automatic valuations and holdings from platforms and providers, so review packs aren't built by hand.
- Fee and commission reconciliation. Matching adviser charges received against what's due, by client and by adviser. This is the part that breaks first in a growing firm.
- Workflows and tasks. New business, annual review, drawdown income changes, all as repeatable processes your team can follow.
- Compliance and file checking. Your compliance support needs to see files, run checks and sign off inside the system.
- Evidence of ongoing service. Since the FCA's ongoing advice review (February 2025) found reviews delivered in about 83% of cases at the 22 large firms it looked at (a sample the FCA said wasn't representative of the whole market), your system needs to show, client by client, that the service you charge for happened. See adviser fees and Consumer Duty for more on that.
- A client portal. Secure document exchange and fact-find completion, instead of email attachments.
- MI and regulatory reporting. New business, income, RMAR data and pipeline in one place.
What's the difference between a CRM and a back office system?
In the UK advice market the terms overlap. A back office (or practice management system) usually means the whole operational core: client records, provider feeds, income reconciliation, compliance and reporting. A CRM strictly means the client relationship and pipeline part. intelliflo office, CURO, Plannr and Xplan all describe themselves as covering both. Salesforce and HubSpot are CRMs first, and adviser firms add the back office functions on top.
If you're comparing quotes, check which of the list above is in the price. A cheap CRM that needs a separate income reconciliation tool isn't cheap.
Who actually picks your back office: you, your network or your buyer?
It's the question most comparison articles skip, and for a lot of advisers it decides the answer before features come into it.
If you're in a network, you'll often be using the network's chosen system, because its compliance team checks files in it. It's a restriction, but it means the adviser, the compliance manager and the case checker all work from the same files. If you're considering a network, ask for a demo of its back office before you sign. You'll be living in it every day. (There's more on that choice in IFA networks in the UK.)
If you're directly authorised, you choose, and you carry the cost and the record-keeping responsibility.
And if you're thinking about selling in the next few years, the back office matters to a buyer. Consolidators usually migrate acquired firms onto their own system, and clean, complete data makes that easier. Iress's UK chief executive has positioned Xplan around exactly those consolidation migrations.
Quick picks
- The one most firms will demo first: intelliflo office. The most widely used in NextWealth's 2023 research, 140+ integrations in its store, cashflow modelling included. Price on request.
- Modern CRM with a published price: Plannr, £140 per employee a month + VAT, client portal included, free licences for outsourced paraplanners.
- Lowest published entry price: Adviser Cloud, £150 a month for the first user and £30 per additional user (ex VAT).
- Firms that run on Microsoft 365: CURO, built on Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform. Price on request.
- Large wealth managers and consolidators: Iress Xplan. Price on request.
- Build your own, with in-house or partner IT: Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, from £260 per user a month billed annually.
Financial adviser CRM and back office prices compared (2026)
Published list prices from each vendor's own site on 27 September 2026. "On request" means no current price is published. Implementation, data migration and add-ons usually cost extra. There's no InvestmentsBooked row: we don't sell software.
| System | Owner | Published price | Best fit | Getting new enquiries in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| intelliflo office | intelliflo (Carlyle) | On request | Sole advisers to large firms; the market default | Open API and 140+ store integrations; Unbiased Pro app creates Leads |
| Plannr | Plannr Technologies | £140/employee/month + VAT; onboarding from £299 + VAT | Small and mid-sized firms wanting a modern CRM | Two-way API; automations when a prospect is added |
| CURO | Time4Advice (IntegraFin) | On request | Mid-sized and larger firms on Microsoft 365 | Own API; Power Automate flows (for example from Microsoft Bookings) |
| Iress Xplan | Iress | On request | Large wealth managers, networks, consolidators | REST APIs that create client and contact records |
| Salesforce Financial Services Cloud | Salesforce | From £260/user/month (£280 Sales + Service), billed annually | Firms with IT resource that want to build their own | Web-to-Lead forms, API, Calendly package (Enterprise and above) |
| Adviser Cloud | Adviser Cloud | £150/month first user, £30 each extra (ex VAT) | Small firms on a budget | API connections (lead intake not specified) |
| Ningi | Ningi | On request (modular) | Firms wanting CRM, compliance and portal in one workspace | Not specified on its site |
CURO's archived pricing page from before August 2022 listed £160 per standard user a month, £195 for an advanced user and a £1,635 monthly firm minimum (ex VAT). That's four years old and not a current quote, but it shows the scale CURO is priced for.
The UK adviser back office systems, one by one
intelliflo office
intelliflo office is the system most UK advisers will have used at some point. NextWealth's 2023 research put its back office share at 52%, and intelliflo says 66% of the UK's top 150 advice firms use it and that it supports more than 29,000 advice professionals (both vendor figures). It covers the full list above, includes cashflow modelling at no extra cost, and has more than 140 integrations through the intelliflo store, which matters because whatever else you buy probably connects to it.
Two changes to know about. Invesco sold intelliflo to Carlyle in 2025. And in June 2026 intelliflo announced a next-generation intelliflo office with agentic AI assistants for checking suitability reports and fact finds, spotting conduct risks and preparing client reviews, due later in 2026. Ask any rep for the migration plan and pricing for the new version before you sign a long contract.
Plannr
Plannr opened to all advice firms in March 2024 and is the most visible challenger. It's one of the few adviser back offices with a price on its website: £140 per employee a month plus VAT, including 20GB of storage per employee, provider feeds, valuations, a branded client portal and free licences for outsourced paraplanners and compliance firms. Firms with more than 50 employees can ask for bulk pricing. It publishes a two-way API, and cashflow modelling comes through integrations (EVPro and Defaqto Engage among them) rather than a built-in tool. Onboarding is priced separately: a £299 + VAT Startr Pack, Concierge Onboarding from £1,990 + VAT, or a £7,000 + VAT Discovery Package, with data migration quoted on top. For a firm of two to ten people moving off spreadsheets or an older system, it's the one we'd put next to intelliflo on the shortlist.
CURO (Time4Advice)
CURO is built on Microsoft's Power Platform and Dataverse, extending Dynamics 365, so it works inside Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams. Time4Advice has been owned by IntegraFin, the parent of the Transact platform, since 2021. Its customer logos include firms like Saltus and Progeny, which tells you who it's aimed at: established firms with defined processes that want to automate them. Because it sits on Microsoft's stack, a firm with Microsoft skills can connect it to other tools through Power Automate. Its customer list and its historic pricing (above) suggest it's aimed at established firms; a sole adviser should ask for a current quote rather than assume.
Iress Xplan
Xplan is the heavyweight. Iress says it's used by five of the UK's eight largest wealth managers by assets and added 50 new UK Xplan clients in 2025, with Evelyn Partners and RBC Brewin Dolphin among recent migrations. It's modular and deeply configurable, which is exactly why most small IFAs don't need it. If you're in a network or a consolidator that runs Xplan, you'll use it; if you're a five-adviser firm choosing freely, it's likely more system than you need. (Iress sold its UK mortgage software business in 2024; Xplan wasn't part of that sale.)
Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
Salesforce's UK page lists Financial Services Cloud for Sales or for Service from £260 per user a month, and the combined edition from £280, billed annually. That's the licence; an implementation partner, integrations with UK providers and fee reconciliation come on top. It suits firms with their own IT or a Salesforce partner and a clear idea of the processes they want to build. Its general lead-handling tools (web forms, marketing automation, booking integrations) are well documented, but UK advice functions such as provider feeds and adviser charge reconciliation aren't part of the standard licence.
Adviser Cloud, Ningi and others
Adviser Cloud publishes £150 a month for the first user and £30 for each additional licence (ex VAT), with remuneration management, RMAR and MI reporting, a fact find and a client portal. It's the lowest published entry price here. Ningi sells a modular adviser workspace (CRM, documents, compliance and portal) on request. moneyinfo is a client portal and relationship platform that many firms run alongside a back office; it's quote-only too. You'll also see HubSpot and Pipedrive used by solo advisers who knew them from another career, usually alongside a separate back office.
Which CRM fits your firm size?
| Firm | Shortlist | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Sole adviser | intelliflo office, Plannr, Adviser Cloud | Published or modest pricing, fast setup, provider feeds without IT help |
| 2–10 advisers | intelliflo office, Plannr | Shared workflows, income reconciliation by adviser, paraplanner access |
| 10–50 advisers | intelliflo office, CURO, Plannr (ask about bulk pricing) | Process automation, MI, compliance oversight across teams |
| 50+ / consolidator | Iress Xplan, CURO, Salesforce FSC | Configurability, migrations of acquired books, enterprise integration |
| Network member | Whatever the network runs | Compliance checks files in the network's system |
This is our reading of pricing structures and vendor positioning, not a ranking from testing each one. Treat it as the starting shortlist for demos.
What matters more than the feature list
Every system on this page ticks most of the feature boxes. The differences that decide whether a firm is happy two years later are different:
- Data migration. Ask who moves your data, what it costs, how long it takes and what gets left behind. Most of the pain in switching lives here.
- Provider feed coverage. Check the platforms and providers your clients actually use are fed in automatically.
- Your team uses it. A system that forces twelve fields before you can log a phone call gets worked around. Get your paraplanner and administrator into the demo as well as the principal.
- Contract and seats. Ask for the minimum term, the minimum number of seats, whether paraplanners and administrators pay full price, and what the annual uplift clause says. Published per-user prices rarely tell you any of that.
- Leaving. Ask how you export everything if you move. It tells you a lot about the vendor.
- One login. Separate systems linked together tend to duplicate or lose data, and you end up logging into three places. Fewer systems that connect properly beat more features that don't.
How do new appointments and leads get into your CRM?
Worth thinking about early. If new clients mostly come from referrals, you'll create the record by hand after the first call and that's fine. If you're buying enquiries or booked appointments, the question is whether the details arrive in your system or get re-keyed. This is what each vendor documents:
- intelliflo office: an open API, a developer sandbox and the intelliflo store. The Unbiased Pro app, for example, creates an intelliflo Lead and Lead Opportunity automatically when an adviser accepts an enquiry (Unbiased's Standard plan and above).
- Plannr: a published two-way API, and automations that can run when a new prospect is added.
- CURO: its own API, plus Microsoft Power Automate. Microsoft Bookings has triggers for appointments being created, changed or cancelled, which a flow can pass into Dataverse.
- Iress Xplan: REST APIs that can create client and contact records, enabled per site.
- Salesforce: Web-to-Lead forms and an API that create Lead records, plus a native Calendly package that creates leads and events when meetings are booked.
Being straight with you about InvestmentsBooked: we don't have a direct integration with any of these systems. Each appointment arrives with a pre-meeting brief (pension value band, pension types, age, retirement stage, what help they want, other assets, meeting type), so creating the prospect record is a short copy-and-paste job rather than a fact-find. How to use that brief in the meeting is in our first meeting guide. If a direct feed into your back office matters to you, tell us when you apply, because it shapes which integration we look at first.
One more reason to keep your CRM clean if you buy appointments from anyone: dates matter. Under our show test, someone who's already your client or a live prospect isn't charged, and the evidence for that is a record in your CRM dated before the booking. Read how that works on our pricing page, and how we source and qualify appointments on lead quality.
We book first meetings with UK savers holding £250k+ in defined contribution pensions (self-declared, reconfirmed on the call) into one firm's diary. £500 per qualified show (no VAT added); no-shows are credited back. See how it works and the four appointment types we book. For the cashflow side of your tech stack, see cashflow modelling software compared.
How we compared these (and our interest)
We haven't run an IFA firm on any of these systems. The comparison uses each vendor's published pricing and product pages, the adviser tech research that's public (NextWealth), trade press and FCA publications, all checked on 27 September 2026. Where a price isn't published we've said "on request" rather than repeat estimates from review sites. The quick picks and firm-size table are our reading of price and positioning, and the right answer for your firm will come out of demos with your own data. InvestmentsBooked has no commercial relationship with any vendor on this page and earns nothing if you choose one. We sell pre-booked pension appointments, so our interest is simply that your CRM lets you follow up fast.
Figures checked 27 September 2026. Vendors: intelliflo (intelliflo.com, cashflow modelling page); intelliflo next-generation platform, Money Marketing, 9 June 2026 (moneymarketing.co.uk); Carlyle acquisition of intelliflo (fundssociety.com); Plannr pricing (plannrcrm.com), onboarding options (plannrcrm.com) and API (plannrcrm.com); CURO (time4advice.co.uk), archived pricing (time4advice.co.uk), ownership (transact-online.co.uk); Iress FY25 UK results, February 2026 (iress.com) and Investment Guide, 20 August 2026 (investmentguide.co.uk); Salesforce Financial Services Cloud UK pricing (salesforce.com); Adviser Cloud (advisercloud.co.uk); Ningi (ningi.co.uk); WealthR on quote-only pricing, 29 June 2026 (wealthr.co.uk). Integrations: Unbiased and intelliflo (knowledge.unbiased.co.uk); Microsoft Bookings connector (learn.microsoft.com); Salesforce Web-to-Lead (help.salesforce.com); Calendly for Salesforce (calendly.com). Research: NextWealth adviser tech report, 2023 (nextwealth.co.uk); NextWealth Financial Advice Business Benchmarks 2026 via Professional Paraplanner (professionalparaplanner.co.uk); FCA ongoing advice services review, 24 February 2025 (fca.org.uk). Market share figures are dated or vendor-reported, as labelled. InvestmentsBooked is not authorised by the FCA and does not give financial advice.