How Your Wealth Is Doing vs Where It Is Heading

Quartz launched in the UK this month. It is a wealth app with an AI assistant called Charlie, and it promises something a lot of people want: every account in one place, and someone to explain it to you.

That is a genuinely useful thing. But it answers one question about your money. There is a second question it does not set out to answer, and for most people in their thirties and forties it is the one that keeps them up at night.

What Quartz Actually Does

Quartz connects to your current accounts, savings, ISAs, pensions, investment platforms and crypto through Open Banking, with 250+ connections. It imports your full transaction history, so it can work out your true return after fees, currency, income and inflation, not just today's balance. Charlie then talks you through your returns, the fees you are paying and how your wealth is allocated.

It is clear about what it is not. Quartz is not a financial adviser, does not hold your money and does not let you trade. It also describes its focus as your wealth as a whole rather than day-to-day spending. It costs £16.99 a month or £169.99 a year after a 14-day free trial.

The Question It Leaves Open

Knowing your pension returned 6.2% last year after fees is useful. It does not tell you whether that pension, plus your ISA, plus your State Pension, will be enough to stop work at 60. It does not tell you what happens if you drop to four days a week, or overpay the mortgage, or retire three years earlier.

That is a question about the future, and at the time of writing Quartz does not advertise forecasts, retirement projections or scenario modelling. It shows you, very accurately, where you are standing. It does not draw the road ahead.

What Delphina Does Differently

Delphina starts from the second question. You add your UK bank, pension and investment accounts yourself. No bank login is shared. Delphina then projects your cash flow up to 30 years ahead, with UK pensions, ISAs and tax built in, and shows you where you stand against retirement today.

Then you can play with it. Move the retirement age. Change what you save. Add a career break. The forecast updates, and you see the effect before you commit to anything.

A Worked Example

Say you are 42, with three pension pots, a stocks and shares ISA and a mortgage with 15 years left. You want to know if retiring at 60 is realistic.

A wealth tracker tells you the pots add up to £186,000, that one of them is charging you more than the others, and that your ISA is heavily weighted to US equities. All true, all worth knowing.

What you still do not know is whether £186,000 at 42 gets you to 60. Delphina takes the same numbers, rolls them forward with your contributions, the State Pension and the mortgage ending, and shows you the gap, if there is one, and which changes close it.

Which One Do You Need?

If your money is spread across many platforms and you mainly want to know how it is performing and what it is costing you, Quartz is a well-built tool for that, and you will be comfortable connecting your accounts through Open Banking.

If what you really want to know is whether you are going to be okay, you need a forecast, not just a snapshot. That is what Delphina is for. Some people will use both.

Neither tool is regulated financial advice. Both help you understand your situation. The decisions stay with you.

Want more detail? Read our Quartz review, or see five alternatives to Quartz for UK users.