Across Wealth Management, firms are racing toward digitisation, innovation, and AI adoption all for efficiency, improved customer experiences, and competitive advantage. Antonietta Price’s recent blog ‘Future of Data Architecture’ sparked a thought. While we’re building data structures and futuristic highways for data, there’s a familiar roadblock that keeps surfacing:
“Our data quality isn’t good enough to do that.”
Legacy systems have been in financial services for decades, but they come with fragmented, outdated, and incomplete data. And instead of being a reason to delay innovation, this is exactly where innovation should begin.
Because customers deserve better. And AI can help deliver it.
Firms hold policies and accounts going back years, decades even, with very limited, sometimes incorrect information. Like Penny policies with almost no customer detail or Dormant pensions where firms simply can’t reconnect with the policyholder
With 3.3 million lost pension pots worth £31.1bn (1) and up to 16.5% of records going out of date annually (2), this isn’t just an operational headache, it’s a consumer engagement challenge and from a regulatory perspective, a risky one at that.
- Customers lose track of valuable assets
- Vulnerable individuals are at greater risk of exclusion
- Firms regulatory exposure increases
Legacy data directly impacts customer outcomes.
The good news? The same tools driving transformation can solve these legacy challenges.
AI can identify and prioritise at risk data
Predictive models can flag the firms dormant accounts and highlight the most critical gaps. AI-powered chatbots can guide their customers through verification steps.
Data enrichment can fill the gaps
The firm can use external sources (Experian, government data, verified third party datasets) to validate addresses and contact details without human intervention.
Digitisation enables safe, simple customer engagement
Secure portals and multi-factor authentication remove the need for paper forms. AI chatbots can guide their customers through safe verification journeys with the option to speak to someone if and when they need to.
Proactive digital engagement replaces ineffective letters
Personalised campaigns (email, SMS, in‑app messaging) reach customers where they already are.
By embedding these solutions, firms reconnect with customers and reduce risk not by avoiding legacy data, but by finally addressing it.
Ready to tackle legacy data? At Simplify we can help shape your IT strategy, modernise your data architecture and explore practical AI use cases that deliver real impact. Drop us a message – we’d love to chat about how we can help.
(1)Lost pension pots reach £31 billion – how to find your old pensions | MoneyWeek
(2)The declining state of data hygiene in the pensions industry
Natasha Bridgewater
Lead Consultant
