Wealth Management: Onboarding Redefined

Evolution brings change, and the financial services landscape—particularly wealth management—is not an exception. Through robotics and automation, digitization is generating significant cost reduction and driving market share gains as the business model of the future is changing.

With shifting investor attitudes and awareness about the advances in technology, clients are extremely tech-savvy. They want to be a part of the process—from prospecting, planning, advice delivery, investing, to the monitoring stages of the wealth management lifecycle. However, the main area of focus is the initial interaction—client onboarding.

Enhancements in digital technology and a consumer-wide increase in service expectations are pushing firms to look at onboarding as a vital part of the overall sales conversation. Hence, the focus of financial services organizations is on enlarging their salesforce, acquiring new clients, and increasing their shares from existing clients.

Client Onboarding: Then and Now

For years, wealth management advice implied pairing a client with a specific human advisor. Client onboarding was perceived as a standalone process and had been purely administrative, involving cumbersome paperwork and manual data entry. Instead of aiming at creating a strong advisor-client bond, the data collected was mostly used to meet compliance needs, making the process an additional burden for financial advisors and their respective teams and insurance agents.

In this challenging economic environment with growing regulatory demands, evolving client expectations, and increasing capital requirements, there is a critical need for a smart, agile, and cost-effective onboarding process implementation. Inefficient onboarding leads to client attrition and missed opportunities for growth, ultimately affecting the firm’s reputation and hampering new client acquisitions.

Firms should possess the best in tools, products, and processes to guide their financial advisors at understanding client needs and providing a new experience to potential clients. This is possible through:

ANALYTICS

Gaining intelligent insights and information (which includes a complete client profile), to be used for enhancing the client experience and overall bond.

DISCOVERY

Understanding the potential client’s financial goals and delivering customized solutions with a guided and comprehensive approach.

AUTOMATION

Making the process efficient, transparent, and responsive to client expectations by using innovative tools and technologies.

Looking Ahead with DecisionMines^TM

Whether it is reskilling your current wealth advisors or hiring digital talent externally, the future of the wealth management workforce is all about embracing technology as a trusted co-worker and maximizing it to the client’s advantage.