Beyond the Pilot: how asset and wealth management is navigating the data and AI transition

The UK manages £10 trillion in assets, the largest pool outside the US, and almost every firm in the sector now accepts that AI will reshape their business. The harder question is how to get there, given the data and technology foundations they need to build on.

Beyond the Pilot draws on 225 interviews with senior IT and technology leaders in UK asset and wealth management businesses to examine how far firms have travelled.

The starting point is data.
44% of firms told us they don't have the data quality, lineage and traceability needed for regulatory confidence. It matches what we heard in interviews: fragmented estates, manual reconciliation, unclear ownership. One CTO put it bluntly: data governance is "a nightmare where everyone owns data and nobody cleans it." 81% told us poor data and legacy systems are slowing their AI progress.

The AI picture is more varied than the headlines suggest.
Almost every firm is running pilots, but only 12% describe AI as transforming their business rather than simply making it more efficient. That 12% is a cohort pulling ahead at pace, they are investing in the foundations that make transformation possible, not just the tools that make existing work faster.

The obstacles are as much organisational as technical.
Leadership sponsorship, strategic clarity and close business-technology collaboration come up again and again in our interviews as the conditions for progress. 37% cite leadership buy-in or cultural resistance as a top barrier, which is why 86% of firms now expect to work with external partners in some form, rather than build entirely in-house.