From underused to unlocked:

How TFAS Wealth got more from the system they already had

“I’ve spoken to lots of other firms about Jigsaw Tree already. For anyone who doesn’t have the capacity to deep-dive into their system themselves, or who needs someone to take the lead and just get it done. It’s a really great way to work. You tell them what you’re looking for, and they go away and do it.” Lauren Kiley, Wealth Director at TFAS.

TFAS Wealth is a Leeds-based, FCA-authorised independent financial advice firm built around a clear philosophy of straightforward, whole-of-market advice, delivered remotely and with genuine client outcomes at the centre.

With over 25 years of industry experience behind the leadership team and a forward-thinking culture running through everything they do – from early AI adoption to end-to-end remote advice, TFAS isn’t a firm that stands still.

That culture of continuous improvement was exactly what brought them to Jigsaw Tree: a recognition that the technology they were already paying for wasn’t working nearly as hard as it should.

“What we’ve built now is something the whole team uses. That’s the point. A well-configured system that only one person understands isn’t a system, it’s a dependency.”

A system with more to give

Before Jigsaw Tree, TFAS had been running on the same CRM system for over a decade. It wasn’t that the system was failing them, over time, their processes had evolved around the way the system was being used, rather than fully reflecting the wider capability available within it.

“I’d been responsible for our use of this CRM system for many years, but I hadn’t really had the capacity to put the time into fixing it and making it more usable for the team. When we reached out to Jigsaw Tree, it was really to understand their offering and what support they could provide.”

Jigsaw Tree carried out an initial database assessment. What came back was unambiguous: there was significantly more value available in the system TFAS were already paying for. They’d built it in a way that worked for how they were reporting, but they’d lost access to a substantial portion of its functionality in the process. The brief that followed was built around eight specific areas of improvement. The question wasn’t whether to act. It was where to start.

A clear brief, no surprises

The statement of work was specific. Eight areas of the platform were scoped for optimisation and all eight were delivered:

• Service status, segmentation and fee models
• Business process lifecycles
• Deauthorisation of advisers
• Aged debt and accruals
• Annual review task uploads
• Bespoke workflows and Document Designer templates
• Compliance mandatory fields
• Personal financial planning and business process dashboards

It was a formidable project team! Jigsaw Tree’s Charly Morris led the project, supported by Sarah Dockree. Lauren worked alongside James Poka, Head of Advice, and members of the wider operations and administration team.

The project cadence matched the work: bi-weekly meetings at the outset, moving to monthly and then as-needed as the project progressed. Fathom notetaking ensured every session was recorded and followed through on, removing the quiet drift that undermines so many engagements.

“Charly’s project management gave us a clear structure that helped us stay on top of things alongside everything else we had going on. She was really quick to respond, great at keeping my diary under control — we had appointments booked in, we knew exactly what we were doing and what was coming next. For me, that’s invaluable. I know how busy I am, and how difficult it is to keep things moving.”

For Lauren, this was the differentiator. Previous projects with other providers had stalled and not through bad intent, but because her team did not have the time to keep momentum. With Jigsaw Tree leading the project nothing was left in the client’s lap.

The data cleanse that changed everything

When Lauren was asked what stood out most from the whole engagement, she didn’t point to a configuration change. She pointed to the data cleanse. TFAS went into the project with approximately 6,000 to 7,000 client records in their system. Many were legacy, transactional, or historic; equity release clients from a service line they no longer operate. The data existed, but it wasn’t organised in a way that allowed them to draw anything meaningful from it. Through a structured segmentation exercise with Jigsaw Tree, TFAS mapped their entire client bank: around 400 active ongoing clients, approximately 1,000 legacy or transactional records, with the remainder identified and separated. Each segment was tagged to their correct category, giving the firm, for the first time, a clear and reportable view of their actual client base.

What that unlocked was significant.

With clean, segmented data, TFAS can now report on vulnerability metrics, run CIP suitability checks across client groups, and focus attention on the right clients at the right time, including across their inbound pipeline, which runs at 10 to 20 new clients per week. The second operational shift that made an immediate difference was the creation of a structured paraplanning queue within the system. Previously, this had been managed via external spreadsheets. Now it sits within intelliflo office and is visible to the whole team, assignable by management, and fully reportable.

“We had a good view across all of our clients for the first time. We could look at whether they’re in the right areas from a CIP perspective, look at vulnerability metrics and the paraplanning queue, means we’re not relying on external spreadsheets any more. It’s all in one place.”

Workflows built with the team, not just for them

One of the most significant changes to come out of the project was the redesign of advice journey workflows and the way that redesign was handled. Jigsaw Tree shared practice workflow templates, then worked through them with Lauren in meticulous detail, adapting each one to TFAS’s specific advice types, metrics, and processes. Before anything was implemented, the full team were given sight of the proposed workflows and invited to review and feed back.

The result: every task in the system now contains everything the team needs to complete it. No switching between the platform and external process guides. No inconsistency between how different team members approach the same case. The advice journey is in the system and it’s readable line by line, step by step.

Implementation followed a soft launch: the new workflows were embedded, used, refined based on real-world feedback, and then formally rolled out from a fixed go-live date, from which point the metrics began.

Training was built in from the start.  Tree ran two sessions with the wider team: one at launch, and one approximately three months later to reinforce embedding, address questions, and ensure any team members who were still finding their feet had space to do so in an open forum.

“The training was really, really helpful. It wasn’t a tick-box exercise,  it was an open forum where everyone could get involved, ask questions, and understand what they were doing and why it mattered. That makes a real difference to how people take it on.”

Embedding change: the audits that hold it together. Getting workflows live is one thing. Keeping them in use, correctly and consistently, across a whole team is another. TFAS built their own mechanism for that.

Every week, the team runs an internal audit: reviewing the advice journey, service cases and the position of each case within the system. Results are fed back to individuals and reviewed as a team. It creates visibility, accountability, and over time – habit. Those audits have shown consistent improvement since go-live. The new approach is becoming increasingly embedded across the team, with weekly reviews helping to reinforce consistency, confidence and good habits. The metrics are moving in the right direction.

There’s also a broader shift. TFAS previously relied on additional spreadsheets running alongside the system; a familiar workaround in financial advice firms that creates data fragmentation, reporting gaps, and duplication of effort. Those spreadsheets are gone. Everything that matters is now captured within intelliflo office, making the data reportable, , and accessible to management from a single source.

Technology built for what comes next

TFAS is a technology-led business. They provide remote financial advice, which means everything from the speed of their processes, the quality of their data, to the reliability of their client journey, has to work. There’s no physical branch to absorb friction.

AI is already embedded in how they operate. TFAS use Aveni, that integrates directly with their CRM. With the intelliflo office configuration now in good shape, that integration is meaningfully more powerful: cleaner data going in, cleaner outputs coming back, and a workflow structure that AI-generated actions can sit within rather than alongside. If the data is dirty and the system is fragmented, AI doesn’t fix that; it amplifies it.

“Jigsaw Tree’s work created the foundation that makes AI adoption worth doing. We’re a very technology-led business. AI feeds straight into our CRM system and being able to use the work Jigsaw Tree has done on the advice journey, means we’re moving through cases quicker and we have the visibility across everything. That’s what allows us to really focus on the client.”

”With new client volumes running at 10 to 20 per week, and the capacity to handle that without adding headcount, the system is now an asset to growth and not a constraint on it. From one project to something more. The measure of a successful engagement isn’t always what happens during the project. It’s what the client does with it afterwards and who they tell.”

Lauren has already made a personal introduction to a strategic partner looking to support financial advice businesses with their technology. It wasn’t a casual mention. It was a direct recommendation, made off the back of her own experience. That kind of referral doesn’t happen because a project was fine. It happens because it genuinely delivered.

“I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Jigsaw Tree. They came in, understood what we needed, managed the whole thing brilliantly, and left us with something we can actually build on.”