In the finance world, financial advisors and clients alike often dread the onboarding process. The repetitive stream of questions and answers — “What’s your address? Do you have a middle initial? What’s your mother’s maiden name?” — gets old quickly, particularly when you’re the one collecting and inputting the information.
Luckily, the evolution of automated data collection software can turn this process from cringe-worthy to exceptional. As the first real client touchpoint with your business, a good onboarding experience can set advisors up for strong customer relationships in the long term.
PreciseFP, the leading data gathering and client engagement solution within wealth management, offers a way to cultivate great customer satisfaction rates from the onset of your relationship. Acquired by Docupace in 2021, PreciseFP elevates the experiences of both clients and advisors with its client onboarding and continuous engagement capabilities. Here are three ways PreciseFP helps eliminate cumbersome data entry and streamline the onboarding process.
Data Collection is More Consistent
Both old and, perhaps surprisingly, young — still prefer a “human touch” when choosing where to put their hard-earned dollars. Investors like the reassurance of an actual expert on the other side of the table, regardless of whether they meet with them physically or digitally.
That doesn’t mean, however, that there isn’t a place for elements of automated wealth management solutions. In fact, this technology can typically elevate the customer experience advisors are able to offer since it handles more of the time-consuming activities that get in the way of advisor-client interactions.
In general, automated solutions like PreciseFP can make for a smoother onboarding experience, particularly through its personalized profile for each customer and automatically prompt clients and advisors when key information is missing. Similarly, moving towards e-signatures, auto-correct, and self-service enrollment options for new clients.
In general, these capabilities help speed up lengthy but necessary onboarding steps, including:
- Manual paperwork for each account opening
- Collecting signatures from all parties
- Snail-mailing and faxing physical paper copies to the back office and clearing firms
- Outdated, static PDF’s
- Completing initial compliance checks
Digitizing these common onboarding processes also helps minimize errors that otherwise cost time and money. Recent research has estimated the average industry standard of Not In Good Order (NIGO) documents to be around 30%. Cutting that number down through an automated, cloud-based onboarding system, even by a few percentage points, can greatly affect your firm’s productivity and efficiency.
Save Time (and Energy) on Fixing Costly Errors
Another huge benefit of a digital onboarding system is the automated and streamlined communication between various platforms that most firms use to conduct business. For example, PreciseFP can set up automatic imports of client data from existing Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or financial planning tools into requisite forms. This transfer cuts down on typos and inconsistencies in customer information since it doesn’t require advisors or staff to re-key data.
Digital onboarding solutions can also plug into Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering requirements to speed up compliance approvals.
Customize Your Onboarding Process
Personalizing your firm’s tech stack is a great way to ensure that advisors are getting exactly what they need. Rather than trying to fit new solutions into legacy software systems, investing in technology that holistically improves the customer and advisor experience can be the best business decision.
Although firms can build needed software in-house or cobble together a variety of different point solutions, adopting an industry-specific, comprehensive platform that integrates all needed functionalities into one bundled solution helps you get real results quicker.
At the end of the day, your firm’s efficiency only matters if it creates seamless and personalized customer experiences. PreciseFP can help advisors focus more on the parts of their job that matter: building long-term customer relationships and providing exceptional service. For more information about PreciseFP start a trial here.
