“You are served by 18th century technology in financial services.”
Petronella West, CEO of Investment Quorum
🎧That single sentence stopped me in my tracks.
It came during an episode of the Citywire Advice Show featuring Petronella West — and it captured something I’ve been seeing (and feeling) across the financial services industry for years.
Despite regulation becoming more sophisticated and consumer expectations rising, many firms still rely on technology stacks that belong in another era. The result? Advice firms are fighting to deliver modern experiences with outdated tools.
☕How a podcast became a wake-up call
Listening to Petronella talk about the evolution of Investment Quorum was both refreshing and inspiring. She shared how, following a management buyout in 2019, the firm took a long, hard look at its infrastructure. It wasn’t a glossy transformation project with consultants and six-figure budgets. It started with a young intern quietly pointing out the truth:
“You’re running a 21st-century business on 18th-century tech.”
Rather than dismiss the comment, Petronella listened. And that moment of humility triggered a fundamental rethink of how the business operated — leading to one of the most effective and people-first digital transformations I’ve come across.
🚧 “Then vs Now” Tech Stack
| Legacy Stack | Future-Ready Stack |
|---|---|
| Desktop CRMs | Cloud-based systems |
| Locked-in platforms | Open APIs |
| Manual compliance notes | Automated audit trails |
| Email for sensitive docs | Secure client portals |
| Data trapped in silos | Data you actually own |
If your tech stack looks like the one on the left, it’s time to change lanes.
🔧 What’s holding most firms back?
Petronella’s story resonated because it’s familiar. We’ve heard it before from clients at Atomise. The blockers are usually the same:
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- Fear of disruption
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- Lack of control over platforms
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- No internal tech team
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- Mistrust of ‘transformation’ consultants
The result? Firms feel stuck — paying for expensive systems that don’t talk to each other, while clients increasingly expect seamless, digital-first interactions.
📈 What does “modern” really look like?
Being future-ready doesn’t mean becoming a fintech. It means doing what you already do — just with better tools.
Modern firms have:
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- 🔍 Clean, structured, portable data
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- 🔐 Secure, client-friendly communication
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- ⚡ Automated workflows for compliance and reporting
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- 🧠 Systems aligned with client outcomes — not internal silos
🌍 The Advice Experience of the Future
This is what clients are starting to expect — and what’s entirely achievable with today’s tech.
🔁 Petronella proved it’s possibleWhat struck me most listening to the podcast was that Investment Quorum didn’t wait for some perfect moment to start transforming. They just started. They listened. They adapted.
They didn’t just buy a transformation — they became one.
If more firms followed this lead — listening to the needs of clients, empowering their teams, and taking ownership of their data — we’d see faster progress, better outcomes, and advice made available to more people at lower cost.
That’s not a dream. That’s what we help our clients do every day.
⚡ Ready to break free?
At Atomise, we help advice firms and wealth managers modernise their systems, simplify their processes, and build the foundations for scale — without the tech overwhelm or consultant jargon.
