Executive Summary
Every wealth management firm has a back book it quietly can't afford to serve. Thousands of clients with smaller portfolios still need advice, reviews and suitability checks, but the cost of delivering that service often wipes out the margin. With the FCA's Consumer Duty raising the bar on outcomes, simply ignoring those clients is no longer an option.
Zugo set out to solve that cost-to-serve problem. Founded by multi-exited fintech entrepreneurs with deep financial services and AI expertise, Zugo combines proprietary AI, structured processes and a white-label SaaS platform so firms can serve lower-value clients profitably and compliantly.
Gunpowder Innovations is Zugo's product design and engineering partner. We designed and built the platform's client-facing and adviser-facing products across mobile and web, under a single design system and a security-first architecture.
Client: Zugo
Industry: Fintech, Regtech, Wealth & Asset Management
Model: White-label B2B2C SaaS
Platforms: iOS, Android and Web
Engagement: End-to-end product design and development
Stack: Figma, Flutter, modern web
Status: Ongoing partnership
The Business Context
Advice firms have long struggled to profitably serve low-value clients. A traditional review with fact-finding, risk profiling, plan design and suitability reporting takes the same adviser time whether a client holds £50k or £500k. For smaller portfolios, the economics rarely work.
Consumer Duty sharpened the problem. Firms must now evidence good outcomes for every client against the FCA's four consumer outcomes, including those they have historically under-served. Zugo's answer is to make those clients commercially viable for every entity in the chain, while reducing regulatory risk at the same time.
The Challenge
Turning that vision into a product meant meeting a demanding set of enterprise requirements:
Multiple audiences, one platform. Consumers, advisers and firm managers each needed their own experience, sharing the same data and logic.
White-label by design. Every firm needed the platform fully branded as its own, without forking the product.
Complex finance, simple experience. Fact-finding, risk profiling and cash flow planning had to feel fast and understandable to non-experts.
Compliance built in. Journeys had to support Consumer Duty evidence and flow cleanly into suitability documentation.
Bank-grade security. Sensitive personal and financial data, including Open Banking and credit reference inputs, had to be protected end to end.
Room to grow. A modular architecture so firms could adopt any or all modules and integrate with existing systems.
The Platform at a Glance
Zugo is delivered as a modular, white-label SaaS. Firms can deploy any combination of four products:
Consumer mobile app: a direct-to-consumer app supporting guidance-based or execution-only journeys
Adviser platform: tools for segmentation, fact-finding, risk analysis and plan design
Client portal: where clients and advisers iterate on a full financial plan together
Business manager module: oversight and control across clients, advisers and plans
Our Role
Product discovery and requirements definition with Zugo's founding team
Information architecture for consumer, adviser and manager journeys
UX/UI design and a white-label-ready design system in Figma
Cross-platform mobile development in Flutter for iOS and Android
Responsive web application development
Secure data handling and encrypted architecture
Quality assurance, release management and ongoing iteration
Phase 1: Discovery & Research
We began by mapping how advice is actually delivered today: where adviser time goes, where clients drop out, and where regulatory risk builds up. Working with Zugo's team, we analysed the challenges asset and wealth managers face with lower-value segments, the evidence Consumer Duty requires, and the complexity of segmenting clients across many dimensions.
Three findings shaped the product:
Fact-finding is the bottleneck. Long, form-heavy data gathering slows every review and frustrates clients. It had to become fast and engaging.
Clarity builds trust. Clients disengage when risk and charges feel opaque. Every number needed a plain explanation.
Advisers need iteration, not paperwork. The value is in testing scenarios quickly and moving straight to suitability, not re-keying data between tools.
Phase 2: Product Strategy & Architecture
We defined a modular architecture where each product shares one data model and one design language. A client's fact-find on mobile appears instantly in the adviser platform. A plan iterated in the client portal flows directly into suitability documentation. Managers see it all from the business manager module.
Guiding principles for every release:
One data model across every product and platform
Brand-agnostic components, so each firm's identity applies everywhere
Plain-English explanations for every financial concept
Compliance evidence captured as part of the journey, not after it
Security and privacy by default
Phase 3: Experience Design
Working in Figma, we built a clean, professional interface designed to communicate trust and modernity. A shared design system keeps mobile and web consistent, and every component is built to accept each firm's branding.
Onboarding and fact-find
The fact-find was redesigned as a guided, step-by-step journey with progress feedback, sensible defaults and minimal typing. Data from Open Banking and credit reference sources can pre-fill answers, cutting effort for clients and advisers alike.
Risk profiling
Risk profiling uses simple, easy-to-understand questions and visual feedback, so clients understand their profile instead of just receiving a label.
Plans and scenarios
Cash flow planning follows a sensible, cash-based approach rather than an over-engineered model. Interactive scenario tools let advisers and clients adjust assumptions and instantly see the impact on future outcomes.
Phase 4: Engineering
Cross-platform mobile
The consumer app was built in Flutter as a single codebase for iOS and Android, keeping feature parity and a consistent experience while each app still follows its platform's conventions.
Responsive web platform
The adviser platform, client portal and business manager module were built as responsive web applications that perform equally well on large adviser screens and on tablets in client meetings.
White-label theming
Branding is applied through configurable themes rather than code changes, so each firm can launch a fully branded platform without a separate build.
Security and data protection
Encrypted data handling, secure authentication and fintech security best practices protect personal and financial information across every module.
Integration-ready
The platform is designed to connect with Open Banking, credit reference data and a firm's existing systems, so it fits into established operations rather than replacing them.
How the AI Fits In
Zugo's proprietary AI is built around machine learning that learns from human advisers, collating and amplifying their expertise and combining it with enriched data from Open Banking and credit reference sources. Our job was to surface that intelligence in the product clearly: segmentation insights for advisers, automated advice drafts ready for review, and recommendations that clients can understand.
Key Features
Multi-dimensional segmentation: data-rich client grouping to tailor service levels
Fast, engaging (re-)fact find: guided data capture with pre-filled information
Simple risk profiling: clear questions and easy-to-understand results
Risk and charges analysis: transparent views of risk and costs
AI-enabled advice generation: automated drafts for adviser review
Cash-based cash flow planning: practical future planning without over-engineering
Interactive scenario modelling: fast iteration to an optimised plan
Plan-to-suitability flow: seamless transition into suitability documentation
White-label branding: fully branded to each firm
Unified mobile and web: synchronised data and one design language
Phase 5: Quality & Delivery
Financial products leave no room for error. Every release goes through functional, regression and device testing across iOS, Android and major browsers, with particular attention to calculations, data synchronisation and security. As an ongoing partner, we ship improvements in regular cycles alongside Zugo's team.
Business Impact
Zugo's model is designed to turn unprofitable and break-even clients into profitable ones. On typical advice firm assumptions, Zugo reports:
About £731 margin gain per client in its hybrid solution (average AUA of £150k), driven by trebling adviser efficiency
About £1,087 margin gain per client in its rich robo journey (average AUA of £75k)
Figures are Zugo's own estimates, net of the typical cost of Zugo's service.
Services Delivered
Product Discovery & Strategy
UX Research & Information Architecture
UI Design & White-Label Design System
Cross-Platform Mobile Development
Web Platform Development
Security & Data Architecture
Quality Assurance & Release Management
Ongoing Product Iteration
Technology
Design: Figma
Mobile: Flutter (iOS & Android)
Web: Responsive web applications
Data: Open Banking and credit reference integrations
Security: Encrypted data handling and secure authentication
Conclusion
Zugo shows what happens when regulatory pressure meets good product thinking. Instead of treating lower-value clients as a cost, the platform makes them commercially viable, and gives firms the tools to evidence good outcomes under Consumer Duty.
As Zugo's design and engineering partner, Gunpowder Innovations turned a complex, multi-audience financial model into a secure, white-label platform that feels simple for clients and powerful for advisers, and we continue to evolve it with every release.
