Over the seven years that we’ve hosted NextWealth Live, a lot has changed. One thing that hasn’t is the percentage of adults in the UK receiving financial advice. That figure has stayed stubbornly at 9%. Which is why the focus of NextWealth Live 2026 was ‘How do we grow the market for financial advice?’

From a nation of savers to a nation of investors

In our CEO debate, Steven Levin, chief executive of Quilter, argued that Britain needs to move from “a nation of savers to a nation of investors.” The framing, echoing the Mansion House reform agenda, gives advice firms, platforms, and asset managers a shared target against which to measure their own contribution. If pension freedoms rewired decumulation a decade ago, the task now is to rewire accumulation for the millions of working-age adults who hold cash but little or nothing in the markets.

Lessons from retail

Simon Belsham, who joined Hargreaves Lansdown from the retail sector, used his session to translate what the direct-to-consumer world already knows into lessons for wealth firms. He argued that the disciplines that built grocery, travel, and beauty online are the same disciplines that will take wealth beyond the 9%.
Customer acquisition in retail is a measured discipline, with cost, frequency, and lifetime value tracked in granular detail. Wealth, by comparison, remains largely reliant on intermediation and word of mouth.

Consolidation for growth

Our Oxford style debate pitted organic growth against consolidation as the primary route to scale. Scott Stevens, managing director at Mattioli Woods, argued for organic growth – investing in people, proposition, and client experience to build durable enterprise value. Natalie Kempster of Purposeful Group made the case for consolidation, pointing to the capital, infrastructure, and management bandwidth that larger groups can put behind growth.
The vote told its own story. Scale carried the room.

Building the bench

The fireside chat with Mark FitzPatrick, chief executive of St James’s Place, landed on what is arguably the binding constraint on growth across the sector: advisers. Adviser numbers in the UK have risen by an average of 0.4% a year over the past six years. When a single firm accounts for 52% of net new advisers, as SJP did last year, the pipeline problem is structural rather than cyclical. Without a sharper focus on recruitment, training, and career pathways — inside large firms and across the profession — the 91% will remain out of reach regardless of the business model deployed to reach them.

The thread

If one thread ran through the day, it was that growth is more than a marketing exercise. It is an operating model. Firms that move the dial will be those that invest in adviser pipelines, treat customer acquisition as a craft, and match proposition to segment with precision.
Getting beyond 9% is important for our sector and for the financial wellbeing of Britons. We’ll make progress on that number when a critical mass of firms decides that moving it is the strategy, not an output of the strategy. On the evidence of NextWealth Live 2026, that mass is beginning to form.

We have partnered with Wavestone to bring you this conference report bringing together the key themes, thought-provoking discussions and standout moments from the day. Click here to download the report.

We are pleased to share the videos from each session that took place at NextWealth Live 2026. If you could not make it or want to relive a moment. Take a look back here.

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Heather Hopkins, Founder & CEO at NextWealth

FAQ: 

1. Why do only 9% of UK adults receive financial advice? The 9% figure reflects a combination of structural barriers: limited adviser numbers, a profession that has historically relied on word of mouth and intermediation rather than proactive customer acquisition, and a cultural tendency toward saving over investing. Addressing this requires changes to business models, adviser pipelines, and how firms approach new client segments.
2.  What does “moving from a nation of savers to a nation of investors” mean for financial advice firms? It means expanding the market beyond existing wealth holders to include working-age adults who hold cash but have little or no market exposure. For advice firms, platforms, and asset managers, it sets a shared growth target — helping more people engage with investments, not just savings products.
3. What can financial advice firms learn from the retail sector? Retail businesses treat customer acquisition as a measurable discipline, tracking cost per acquisition, frequency, and lifetime value in detail. Financial advice firms can apply these same principles — moving away from referral dependency toward data-driven, scalable growth strategies that mirror what has worked in grocery, travel, and e-commerce.
4. Is consolidation or organic growth the better strategy for financial advice firms? Both have merit, but at NextWealth Live 2026, the audience voted in favour of consolidation as the primary route to scale. Larger groups bring capital, infrastructure, and management capacity that organic growth alone struggles to match. That said, organic investment in people, proposition, and client experience remains critical to building long-term enterprise value.
5. What is the biggest barrier to growing financial advice in the UK? Adviser supply. UK adviser numbers have grown by just 0.4% per year over the past six years, creating a structural bottleneck. Without meaningful investment in recruitment, training, and career pathways across the profession, demand-side efforts to grow the market will be constrained. Solving the pipeline problem is as important as any marketing or consolidation strategy.