On 16 April 2026 The Wealth Mosaic and Raw Knowledge teamed up to launch a new research paper, Order from disorder: Moving from fragmented data to competitive advantage at a live discussion event in London.
Chaired by The Wealth Mosaic’s founder Stephen Wall, the event boasted a panel including:
- Caroline Burkart, Project Consultant at The Wealth Mosaic and principal rapporteur for the research paper
- Preya Patel, Managing Director of Raw Knowledge
- Mark Kerns, CEO of Adapa Advisory
- Robert Hupe, Practice Head at Knadel Solutions.
The event opened with Caroline Burkart summarising the research, which included a range of interviews with wealth management executives at mostly mid-tier UK wealth firms. “Wealth is a data business,” she said. Although the familiar narrative about relationships and trust still holds, “it also rests on the necessity of providing timely and accurate information, so the client can make the appropriate decisions about their finances.”
The industry is still working through its deeply embedded data problems, Burkart said, pointing to fragmented data across disparate systems, with firms having limited governance over “who collects what data, where it’s stored, and how it’s maintained”.
The drivers for change are hard to miss. Preya Patel described “a multitude of things colliding together” including regulation, M&A, client expectations, and technology shifts, that push data firmly onto the leadership agenda. “Data is a board-level priority now,” she said, adding that issues such as reporting errors and integration challenges are increasingly seen as business risks – when they could instead be sources of competitive advantage.
Rober Knadel framed the shift less as a sudden change and more as an accumulation – pointing to client impact, cost pressure, and decision-making risk as the three forces steadily pushing data higher up the priority list. “Where data has a really direct impact is where it negatively or positively impacts the client, where it drives cost or risk, or how it informs decision-making. If you’ve got flawed data, you might be making flawed decisions.”
That pressure is exposing long-standing weaknesses within firms. Reflecting on over 30 years in the industry, Kerns noted that even though data has always been a problem, “it’s now a bigger problem than it ever has been,” Mark Kerns said. Increasing asset complexity, from private markets to digital assets, has only compounded the issue, he added.
One of the factors that is making firms’ data challenges more obvious is their application of artificial intelligence (AI). Firms with poorly managed data are finding that, rather than increasing efficiency, AI applications simply magnify mistakes. “If we’re relying on AI and we’re putting poor data into AI, we’re getting flawed outcomes,” Knadel said.
Reaching the single source of truth
The goal for the industry is a “single source of truth”, Burkart explained, that moves away from disparate silo systems towards a centralised environment where data can be edited “once, and once only”.
But in practice, that is difficult to achieve. Much of the challenge sits in the front office. “Relationship managers and advisers are the gatekeepers of that data, so it’s important to have them on board” Burkart said, but many still rely on personal systems or spreadsheets that aren’t visible to the wider business.
Unstructured data is another layer, Patel said. “Valuable information sits in emails, conversations, and PDFs that are often inaccessible at scale. For Raw Knowledge itself, automating extraction using AI increased processing capacity sixfold while reducing manual effort by half.
The biggest problem for many firms is not the data strategy itself, but its implementation, Burkart said. Even though all the firms interviewed for the research paper had a data strategy in place, they found implementation fraught with challenges including legacy remediation, resource constraints, and competing priorities.
The drive for change “needs to be embedded in the culture of the organisation – as a long-term shift, not a quick fix,” Kerns said. “There’s a mindset shift that needs to happen, so this is a long-term game.” Patel agreed, stressing the need for training, education, and support that allows the organisation as a whole to understand both the objectives and benefits of achieving good data management.
There is also a gap between intent and execution. Knadel knotted that, although many firms claim good data is a priority and C-suite executives claim it’s important, “there’s a delta between that and actually putting it into practice” – particularly when it comes to budget and accountability.
Where progress is happening, it tends to be incremental. Kerns advocated focusing on specific pain points – “what’s causing the most pain, what’s driving the most cost” – and building from there, rather than attempting wholesale transformation upfront.
When realised, the benefits are tangible. Better data supports faster client response times, improved reporting, and more effective decision-making. “If we can get to a place where we’re applying the data and using it in such a way that it enables our staff to do what they need to do with significant efficiencies and enable scale, you can really empower your font office,” Knadel said.
“Most firms are still on that journey rather than having achieved their goals,” Burkart said. But it is now at least a priority. Data is no longer an internal inconvenience. It is tied directly to growth, cost, and client experience. And now, even though many firms are at different places on the journey, for the industry as a whole, the journey has begun.
Interested in reading the full research paper? You can read and download it here.
About the WealthTech Insight Series (WTIS)
This research is part of The Wealth Mosaic’s WealthTech Insight Series (WTIS), an ongoing and
developing research process, mixing online surveys and interviews, and focused exclusively on technology in the wealth management sector across the world.
Rather than a one-off research process, the WTIS will seek to build an ongoing program of research among wealth managers of different types across the world on a broad range of technology and related topics, building up an aggregated knowledge base of both qualitative views and perspectives as well as quantitative data points.
Discover our research collection!
- Optimising revenue management: spillage, leakage, and pricing discipline – read here
- AI and analytics in wealth management – read here
- From survival to reinvention: the new playbook for technology spend in wealth management – read here
- The European wealth playbook for growth – read here
- The role of technology for recruitment and retention within wealth management – read here
- The quest to become the best – becoming the trusted wealth coach and adviser – read here
- Productivity and growth in wealth management – read here
- Managing model portfolios on multiple platforms – read here
About Raw Knowledge
Raw Knowledge is a specialist data provider and data management firm under the Industrial Thought group of companies.
Raw Knowledge began life as part of sister company Financial Software (FSL). Its team helped identify the need to improve industry access to quality excess reportable income (ERI) data and provided this to both its own and FSL clients. As its team, customer base and capabilities grew, Raw Knowledge separated from FSL in 2024 to begin offering its own solutions and services.
Today, Raw Knowledge provides the most comprehensive ERI data in the market and helps businesses make better, data-driven decisions with its Managed Smart Data Platform. This pioneering data management platform creates a traceable and harmonised view of businesses’ disparate data sources to help them streamline and scale their operations, act faster on insights with fewer errors and maintain a clear audit trail.
About The Wealth Mosaic
The Wealth Mosaic is a UK-headquartered online solution provider directory and knowledge resource, focused specifically on the wealth management industry.
For wealth managers, the buy side of our marketplace, The Wealth Mosaic is designed to enable discovery of key solutions, solution providers, and knowledge resources by specific business needs.
For solution providers and vendors, the sell side of our marketplace, The Wealth Mosaic exists to support the positioning, exposure, and business development needs of these firms in a more complex and demanding market.
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