[The client] is heading from £500m to roughly £1bn over the next three years, with a DFM partnership starting now and permissions to follow. The investment process behind that is rigorous and well run. The problem is the maths underneath it: as things stand, every £70m of new money brings another administrator and another paraplanner. Grow that way and the firm gets bigger, not better. This proposal breaks that link, so the next £70m costs less to run than the last.
The plan has four phases, and you only ever commit to one at a time. Phase 1 is a paid discovery: half a day on site at client offices, then the work to pin down exactly what gets built. Phase 2 builds the core tool, turning your three inputs (quantitative data, qualitative research and the IMC vote) into fund fact sheets and clear buy, sell or hold calls, each one fully auditable. Phase 3 adds the wider automation once that foundation exists: paraplanning, macro briefings, client reporting and the cross-platform reporting you have wanted out of [their adviser platform], [their secondary platform] and [their wrap platform]. Phase 4 is the ongoing relationship you and [Founder] described.
We build it to grow. As new data sources come on, including the DFM's research licences, they slot in without a rebuild. Phase 1 confirms what each system will and will not allow. And because this is a regulated firm, the audit trail is in the architecture from day one, not added later.
What we are asking for to start. A yes to Phase 1 only, at a fixed £4,500. It produces a priced specification for the build and an honest recommendation either way. Phases 2, 3 and 4 are decisions you make later, once we both know what we are signing up for.
Before we propose anything, here is what we heard. The whole proposal is built on these six points. If we have any of them wrong, the proposal is wrong, so tell us before we go further.
Project one is the investment process tool. It pulls together your quantitative data ([their fund-data provider] now, the DFM's licences later), the qualitative research from fund manager meetings, and your in-house vote, and turns all of it into fund fact sheets and clear buy, sell or hold calls for the IMC.
You have already started building the screening piece in-house, under the name [their internal prototype]. We start from that, not a blank page. Phase 1 gets into what is already there and treats it as the prototype the build grows from.
Today the process moves at the speed of the IMC calendar. You want it to move at the speed of the market: the tool watches daily, flags anything that crosses your criteria, and puts it in front of the right person, instead of waiting for the next meeting.
[Founder] is the champion and the decision maker, and he already wants this done better. [Ops Director] owns delivery day to day. We have set the engagement up to match that: [Ops Director] is our everyday contact, and [Founder] has a clear sign-off at the end of each phase.
[Ops Director] put it plainly: every £70m of new money means another administrator and another paraplanner. That is the number this proposal is built to change. We measure success by that, not by hours billed.
The tool is the first step, not the whole story. Behind it sits the reporting problem across [their adviser platform], [their secondary platform] and [their wrap platform], the paraplanning and suitability work, and the wider AI Super Team [Ops Director] described.
Calling this "automating the IMC" would undersell it. The value sits in three places, and only one of them is about speed.
The cost of growth. Today, growth and headcount rise together. Going from £500m to near £1bn means four to seven new hires across paraplanning and administration if nothing changes. Take even a slice out of that ratio and the yearly saving is worth several times this build. That is the prize: assets that grow faster than the cost of running them.
Speed of decision. Today the process is paced by the IMC calendar: gather between meetings, debate at the meeting, decide, repeat. Live monitoring changes what the firm can do, not just how fast it does it. Once you hold DFM permissions and can act on a decision the day you make it, spotting a change on a Tuesday and adjusting on a Wednesday becomes normal. The tool is what makes that possible.
Room to grow. The DFM partnership opens up research through their licences, and the exact shape of that is still being worked out. We build so any new source, the DFM feed, Morningstar, anything later, slots in cleanly when it arrives. Phase 1 confirms what each will allow. And if [Client] ever leaves the partnership and goes direct, the same architecture still holds.
And the edge worth protecting. Most wealth managers your size hand the investment decision to a DFM and run the model they are given. [Client] does not, and keeps that control even inside the DFM partnership. That independence is the firm's real edge, and it is what clients are paying for. The tool is here to sharpen it, never to commoditise it.
The shape of the tool is already clear from the call. Three inputs feed a scoring layer, which produces one auditable output for the IMC. The build is mostly about making that flow real, fast and easy to explain.
[their fund-data provider] now, with room for Morningstar and the DFM's research later. The tool pulls returns, volatility, drawdown, manager tenure, AUM and sector rank every day. Your screening criteria live in the system as rules you can edit.
A structured home for fund manager meetings and questionnaires, topped up with AI research from interviews and commentary already in the public domain. Your team stops re-asking what is already answered and focuses on the questions only they can.
Your voting mechanism stays exactly as it is. The tool simply captures each member's score and combines them in the open. Human judgement is built into the process, not bolted on at the end.
These reach the IMC before the meeting. Each one shows how the three inputs combined, which criteria were triggered, and what has changed since last time. The AI does the narrowing and the surfacing. The IMC makes the call.
The audit layer. You raised this on the call, and it is one of the smartest things about the brief. Every recommendation carries its full history: the data behind the score, the thresholds it crossed, who voted which way. If the FCA, the IMC or a client asks how a decision was reached, the answer is one click away. It is in the build from day one.
Each phase ends with something real in your hands and a genuine decision to make, including the decision to stop. You are not signing up for a year on day one. You are signing up for Phase 1, which exists to tell you whether Phase 2 is worth doing.
Half a day on site at client offices, working sessions with the investment team, and the homework to pin down exactly what gets built. The output is a specification priced firmly enough that the build becomes a simple yes or no. Around five days of work across a two week window, quicker if you have a deadline.
The full scope for Phase 2, illustrated and priced firmly, ready for [Founder] and the IMC to sign off.
How Phase 2 builds in sequence, and an honest view of what Phase 3 could add once it is done.
At the end you have a fixed price for Phase 2 and a clear view of Phase 3. You commit to the build only if the spec earns it. And if you decide not to, you still walk away with a documented, ratified investment process that feeds straight into your DFM due diligence. Either way, Phase 1 is worth doing.
The core build. [their internal prototype] grows up into the full investment process tool. By the end of this phase the IMC opens one screen, sees the whole fund universe against your criteria, and reviews AI-drafted fact sheets with the audit trail behind each. The figures below are estimates, fixed once Phase 1 shows us the real complexity. If you have a deadline, tell us early.
Deployed for use by the investment team, the IMC and yourself, on infrastructure of your choosing.
Screening criteria, scoring weights and asset allocation tram lines, all editable by you, no code required.
Every IMC decision underwritten by a traceable, time-stamped record of inputs, scores and votes.
Walkthroughs with the investment team, written documentation, and a recorded demo for IMC induction.
Once the tool is live it needs looking after: bug fixes, small changes, data feed tweaks as your process evolves. That is the Platform Maintenance retainer, £2,000 a month for up to two days of development and support. It starts at go-live and is separate from the Phase 4 advisory retainer. Take either, both, or neither.
With the structured data from Phase 2 in place, a second tier of automation becomes cheap to build. This is where paraplanning time drops sharply, where macro briefings come prepared rather than written from scratch, and where the reporting problem across [their adviser platform], [their secondary platform] and [their wrap platform] finally gets solved.
The hard part of Phase 3 is the data plumbing, and Phase 2 has already done it. The structured data, the IMC outputs and the audit trail are all there. Adding paraplanning and macro briefings on top costs a fraction of building them alone. That is the payoff for doing Phase 2 first instead of chasing quick wins one at a time.
The phase is modular: run all of it, or pick the two or three pieces that matter most. Reporting is the natural place to start, given how often it came up. Paraplanning is the best return per pound. Macro briefings are the easiest win to show the team. Our advice comes with the Phase 2 roadmap; the order is yours.
An ongoing relationship, not a project that ends and a consultant who disappears. The call where you say "we are thinking about X with AI, good idea or red herring?" and get an honest answer quickly.
£2,500 a month covers up to two days of advisory plus the quarterly review, priced a little below our standard day rate for the longer commitment. Need more in a given month and it scales; we would rather flex to what the firm needs than hold you to a rate card. This is separate from the Platform Maintenance retainer in Phase 2. Take either, both, or neither.
AI moves faster than any in-house team can reasonably keep up with. The retainer means you do not have to. You run the firm; we stay across what is genuinely changing and what is just noise, and we tell you which is which.
Phase 1 is fixed. Phase 2 is a range that becomes a firm, scope-dependent price once the spec is signed. Phase 3 is priced after Phase 2. The two retainers begin once the tool is live and run for as long as you want them.
| Phase | Duration | Outcome | Investment |
|---|---|---|---|
Discovery and Scoping Phase 01 · Fixed fee |
~5 days over 2 weeks | Priced MVP spec and phased roadmap, firm Phase 2 price. | £4,500 Fixed fee |
MVP Build Phase 02 · Fixed price |
10 to 12 weeks | Investment Process Tool live and in use by the IMC, with full audit trail. | £42k–£55k Estimated range · scope dependent · locked at end of Phase 1 |
AI Augmentation Phase 03 · Modular, fixed price per module |
8 to 12 weeks | Paraplanning, macro briefings, client reporting, cross-platform MI dashboards. | TBC Scoped and priced after Phase 2 |
Platform Maintenance Ongoing · Monthly retainer |
From go-live, ongoing | Bug fixes, small changes and data feed upkeep for the live tool. Up to two days per month. | £2,000 Per month |
AI Super Team Phase 04 · Monthly retainer |
From go-live, ongoing | Strategic advisory, quarterly review, training, network access. | From £2,500 Per month, 6-month minimum |
How we price. Phases 1 and 2 are fixed price. No hourly billing, no scope creep. If something genuinely changes mid-build, we agree it with you in writing first. Our standard day rate for one-off work is £1,500; the Phase 2 figure is priced below that, which is how we handle longer projects. The final number is scope-dependent and locks when the spec is signed.
A note on framing. Phase 1 is a small, fixed commitment. Phase 2 is the real investment, and it only firms up once you have seen the spec and chosen to go ahead. Phase 3 and the retainers come later, on your timetable. You never commit to a number you have not seen and agreed.
A realistic view, assuming Phase 1 starts in late May or early June and Phase 2 follows straight on. Phase 3 can run alongside the back end of Phase 2 or after it, depending on appetite and the order you and [Founder] want.
Phase 1 begins on a single signed Statement of Work. Phase 2 begins when the spec is signed, Phase 3 modules when each is commissioned, and the two retainers at go-live.
These are the things we have assumed in shaping this proposal. If any are off, we want to know in the Phase 1 kick-off so we can adjust before scope is locked.
Data, security and confidentiality. [the client's] screening criteria, scoring weights and voting mechanism are treated throughout as confidential [Client] intellectual property, and we are glad to sign an NDA and a data processing agreement before Phase 1 begins. Data is stored and processed on infrastructure [Client] controls and handled in line with UK GDPR.
Payment terms. Phase 1 is invoiced on signature of the Statement of Work. Phase 2 is invoiced against milestones rather than up front, typically a deposit on sign-off of the spec and the balance across the build stages. Retainers are billed monthly in advance. Standard terms are 14 days. Exact terms are confirmed in each Statement of Work.
We start with outcomes, not features. Every project begins with "what changes in the business", not "what do we build". The feature is just the means. The outcome is the deal.
We are small and senior on purpose. Tom leads every engagement himself and is in the room for the work that matters. When a job needs a specific skill beyond that, we bring in people from a network Tom has worked with for years: senior developers, CTOs, product analysts, operations leads, all vetted, on day rate, and only on the work that needs them. You are never handed to a junior you have not met. Continuity is built in: the work is documented as it goes, the network covers when more hands are needed, and all code and IP transfer to you on payment. You are never locked to one person.
We treat AI as an amplifier, never the decision maker. It does the narrowing, the surfacing and the first draft; a qualified person makes the call. In a regulated firm that is what keeps you compliant, keeps liability where it belongs, and keeps the team happy to use the tool.
We work closely with your team, not behind a curtain. Your team has access throughout, not just at the gate reviews: weekly check-ins, a shared workspace, and one channel for any question as it comes up.
We are honest about what AI can and cannot do. There is a lot of overclaiming in the market right now. Our job is to build the things that genuinely help and to say plainly when something will not. That honesty is what the retainer is built on.
Tom runs Woollard Works, his AI consultancy, working across insurance, property and regulated services. Before that he spent six years building Bunk, a UK property technology business: raising institutional capital, scaling an engineering and product team, and winning a £700k Innovate UK grant for AI-first work in the rental sector.
He thinks like an operator who has run a business, not a consultant passing through. That tends to mean faster decisions and a sharper sense of what is actually worth building. Every [Client] engagement is led by Tom himself.
Three inputs, a five-step process, a clear output, and one number that defines success. Most firms cannot describe what they want this cleanly. [Client] did it on the first call, which means we can move fast and build the right thing.
The hardest projects are the ones where the team wants change and the founder is sceptical. Here it is the other way around: [Founder] is championing it, and [Ops Director] can deliver it. That combination is what gets things shipped.
The DFM due diligence is already making you document and ratify the investment process. This engagement overlaps with that and speeds it up. The work is happening anyway. The only question is whether it ends in a tool or just a document.
If this lands, the path from here is short. [Ops Director] reviews it with [Founder], the three of us talk it through, and Phase 1 begins.
Thank you for the call, and for the thought you had clearly put in before it. This is exactly the kind of work we enjoy most, and we would like to do it with you. Whatever you decide, it was a good conversation.