Contributor article

Matt Noble's five bulk asset migration takeaways

Matt Noble Head of Business Development, Origo

Ask any advice firm (or platform provider) about bulk asset migration, and you will hear the same (valid!) gripes about the fatigued manual, spreadsheet-based process. I’ve spent years troubleshooting exactly that, and from talking to the people who live and breathe consolidation, one thing is clear to me: the market has quietly moved on, but not everyone has noticed. Origo’s latest paper, “The Asset Migration Imperative”, explains why bulk asset migration has gone from back-office afterthought to a boardroom priority.

To avoid confusion, “asset migration” is what happens when an adviser firm moves clients to a new platform. It’s the coordinated transfer of their holdings, often in bulk, from the old platform to the new one.

I understand that not everyone has the time to read a full whitepaper, so I thought I’d outline the key points that I believe are worth thinking about from a strategic perspective. The following takeaways will take you no longer than ten minutes to read. Enjoy:

1. The light touch era is over. Scaleable infrastructure is now the focus

In October 2025, the FCA’s multi-firm review made it clear that the “light touch” phase of consolidation, where growth and cost-cutting were rewarded with little scrutiny while ignoring the broken plumbing underneath, is over. Disjointed processes, and tech in urgent need of an upgrade are now core to how both the regulator and future consolidators judge an advice business. With over 75% of UK wealth managers planning acquisitions and around £1 trillion of adviser assets in play, this is not a niche concern: it’s the current climate we must embrace.

2. Death by a thousand spreadsheets

Here’s the part that may sting a little. Advisers have told us they spend up to two thirds of their time on migration admin rather than clients. Inefficient technology and manual processes now account for more than 10% of total costs in many advice firms, with two thirds of advisers reporting the drag. Migrations often take six to twelve months, and sometimes closer to two years. One adviser we interviewed even had to escalate to a receiving platform’s CEO just to get things moving after an entire year. In an industry this proud of its innovation, that’s genuinely hard to defend.

3. Painting the PE story

PE-backed consolidators feel a genuine tension. They need to acquire at pace to deploy capital, yet integrate with discipline to satisfy the regulator and protect exit valuations. The firms pulling ahead are buying well and integrating systematically, and the ability to move fast without losing control comes down to the infrastructure. Get that right and the trade-off between keeping the FCA happy and protecting exit valuations largely disappears.

Simply put: bulk asset migration is no longer nice-to-have technology. It’s the strategic platform-switching infrastructure that allows consolidators to write the next chapter of their PE story.

4. A bump in the consolidation road

Here’s a really disappointing truth: nearly 20% of consolidators have already paused migrations due to integration failures. Not because the capital dried up, but because the operating model simply could not keep up. Advice firms investing in standardisation and governance keep growing whilst others are falling behind. Firms that are still loosely held together by spreadsheets and manual (heroic!) effort could face regulatory pressure and even buyer hesitation. When a future buyer runs due diligence, documented, auditable migration evidence beats scattered spreadsheets every single time. The evidence is clear to see, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to ignore – rightly so!

5. This is a strategic decision, not an IT ticket

Using Origo Asset Migration (OAM) is more than a technology choice. It gives an advice firm one integration playbook, one view of migration risk, one consistent approach to meeting Consumer Duty requirements, and one clear method for your platform partners to work with.

For platforms, embracing OAM means faster inflows, lower costs and a real differentiator when pitching to the most sophisticated consolidators and advice firms.

For consolidators and PE-backed advice firms, migration infrastructure stops being a cost line and becomes part of the equity story.

Closing off

There’s one thing that gives me real confidence in where this is heading, and that’s the development of new solutions to support advisers with bulk asset migrations. One example of this is Origo Asset Migration (OAM). The service was shaped in the real world, not a lab. Scottish Widows and Origo partnered together, alongside several large national advice firms, to gather feedback and help steer the ongoing development of the service. This is now live and is moving assets in bulk.

So the question I would leave with you is simple, as this more disciplined wave of consolidation builds, do you want to be the firm trailblazing, or the one explaining why your bulk migrations are taking such a long time, and still run on spreadsheets? It’s time to strengthen your strategic tech stack, demand better from your platform partners, and make bulk migration a competitive advantage rather than a bottleneck.

Discover more about OAM and read the full whitepaper ‘The Asset Migration Imperative’ on the Origo Asset Migration insights webpage here.