Why held-away cash is a client support issue, not just an AUM opportunity
Held-away cash is often treated as a growth opportunity. It can be, but that is not the whole story.
09 October 2026
Definition
What are held-away assets?
Held-away assets are the accounts, pensions, policies and property a client holds outside their adviser's or firm's management. They are frequently the larger part of the client's wealth, and they remain invisible to planning until the client discloses or connects them.
The consequences run in both directions. Advice given without them is advice given on partial information — an inheritance tax exposure that is not modelled, a duplicated holding, a risk profile that does not reflect the whole portfolio. And a firm that cannot see them cannot serve them.
Disclosure is inherently patchy. It relies on the client remembering, at a review meeting, an arrangement made decades ago with an employer they have half forgotten.
This is where open finance connections change the economics. A maintained, permissioned record surfaces held-away assets continuously rather than at annual intervals, and it does so as a by-product of the client keeping their own affairs in order.
