Client onboarding automation for financial advisers

Where does onboarding slow down?

A new client says yes, and then the paperwork starts. The delay is rarely the advice. It sits in the steps around it:

• The fact-find comes back in pieces. A form goes out by email, half of it returns, and someone rings to collect the rest.
• Documents arrive in three places. Some by email, some by post, some as phone photos sent to an adviser's mobile.
• Signatures stall. An agreement waits for a signature, and nobody notices for a week.
• Compliance steps live in someone's head. The checks get done, but proving when and by whom means searching inboxes.
• The client cannot see progress. So they call to ask, and an adviser stops work to find out.

Our page for financial advisers covers the wider practice, from enquiries to reviews. This page is only about the stretch between "yes" and the first piece of advice.

Which three solutions fit, and what does each do?

You may need one of these or all three. The audit decides, and it starts from what you already have. More on the sector is on our finance page.

What does onboarding look like once it is built?

1. The client agrees to go ahead. Your team changes one status in the CRM, and the client receives a portal invitation.
2. The client completes the fact-find. The answers land on their CRM record, not in an attachment.
3. The portal lists the documents you need. Each upload attaches to the right request and ticks it off.
4. Reminders chase what is missing. You set the wording and the gaps between them.
5. Your compliance checklist opens as tasks. Each has an owner, and each completion is recorded with a name and a time.
6. A person approves. Nothing that needs sign-off moves forward until the named person has given it.
7. The adviser gets a complete file. They start the advice with everything in one place.

What is it worth? Do the sum

The leak, in an owner's words: "Every new client costs us hours of chasing, and now and then one gives up before we have started." The steps above are the mechanism. The sum has two parts: the chasing, and the clients who drop out.

Example figures. Swap in your own. These are round numbers we made up to show the method. They are not a result, an average for advisers or a forecast. The hours only count as money if you use them: more clients onboarded by the same team, or a hire you no longer need.

For your own number, take your last ten new clients. Count the chasing messages and calls each one needed, time a typical one, and count how many people agreed to proceed but never completed. Or work out your own figure with our ROI calculator.

Bring those counts to a call. The paid audit follows, and its report prices each problem for a year.

What stays with a person, and what do we not claim?

Regulated advice stays with a qualified person. The system moves forms, documents, dates and tasks. It never recommends a product, comments on suitability or answers a client's question about their money.

We claim no regulatory status for our builds or for your firm. The rules that apply to you are yours to meet, and the written scope settles which steps need approval, who gives it and what is recorded. Our part is to build exactly that and to test it on real cases before a client sees it.

The closest build we can show is MRM Group, a property company and not an advice firm. It has agreement-before-payment flows, document handling, reminders and audit history, with human approval at sensitive financial-promotion points. We publish build details for MRM, not results.

What does it cost?

The first step is a paid audit: £3,000 plus VAT (US $5,000), with a written report delivered within 10 working days. The fee is credited against the build when the build deposit is paid within 14 days of the report. Before the audit we give a range, never an exact price.

Scoped builds run from £5,000 to £20,000 (US $10,000 to $30,000). A portal for one client type, with login, onboarding, files, messages and progress, sits at £4,500 to £10,000. Approvals, signatures and integrations with your back-office system move it up, and our client portal pricing page explains each band.

You own the code and the data, and hosting and software are paid directly to the providers from your own accounts. The timeline is agreed in the written scope. Ongoing support is optional, from £1,000 a month.

When the tools you already have are enough

If your back-office system already has a client portal and task tracking, switch those on and use them properly before you pay for a build. A firm taking on a few clients a month can also run onboarding from one shared checklist and a diary.

A build is the wrong first step if your onboarding process is not yet written down. Automation repeats whatever you give it, so agree the steps and the approvals first. It is also poor value while the sum above stays below the cost of the build.