WM Mini Guide - Final Copyright Version
- 1. Paperless How to Create a by Mike Gardner CEO, AGREEMENT EXPRESS MINI GUIDE Client Onboarding Process in Wealth Management
- 2. page 1© 2015 Agreement Express What is this Mini Guide about? This Mini Guide is meant to be your first steps toward creating a paperless client onboarding process for your wealth management firm. According to research by CEB Tower Group, “A new client is almost twice as likely to recommend their firm when they have an “excellent” initial interaction as when they have a “fair” initial interaction.” We want to help you create an excellent initial interaction with your clients, through creating a paperless onboarding process. While not exhaustive, this Mini Guide will give you the big picture mental blocks you need to understand how your firm can transform the onboarding process from: • Clunky • Error-filled • Paper-based • Frustrating To become paperless and: • Delightful • Fast • Compliant • Revenue-generating Sound too good to be true? Keep reading to find out.
- 3. page 2© 2015 Agreement Express Table of Contents The Problem 3 Diagnostic: Am I paper-based or digital? The cost of paper-based onboarding Gartner™ Hype Cycle User Adoption The Solution 7 Mike Gardner’s Cycle of Adoption CSI: Convenience Savings Improvement Next Steps 10 Conclusion 14 Agreement Express 15 Your digital partner About Mike Gardner 16
- 4. page 3© 2015 Agreement Express Part 1: The Problem Diagnostic: How do I know if I’m paper-based or digital? You may be thinking, “Well, we use a computer in our onboarding process, so we’re not completely paper-based.” If you aren’t sure if you have a paper-based process or not, take a second to answer these questions. 1. Do you ever have to print a document for any reason during the onboarding process? 2. Do clients have to use a wet ink signature at any point in your onboarding process? 3. Do you have mandatory forms from other departments and external organizations that you submit in paper form, or in email attachments? If you answered yes to any of these questions, your onboarding is still paper-based to some extent. And yes, it is possible to say “no” to all of these questions. “But what’s wrong with paper- based onboarding?” There are three big problems with continuing to use paper in your boarding process.
- 5. page 4© 2015 Agreement Express 1. Frustrates clients Filling out a paper form isn’t all that bad. What IS frustrating, is filling out a multiple page form, only to submit it and find out you entered something differently than your advisor wanted you to, spawning a multiple-email thread and delaying your account opening by days. Behind the Times Another problem is that clients have become accustomed to entering their information digitally, which is faster and easier. When they arrive at their wealth advisor’s office to find an outdated form of data collection, it does not inspire confidence and customer loyalty, and it certainly doesn’t make them think of excellence. 2. Costs you money Collecting information on paper costs your firm money in two main ways: • Administrative hours: Data entry is expensive, and doubly so when data entry employees have to call the advisor to notify them of a mistake • Opportunity cost: Every time your wealth advisor has to deal with a paperwork, data, or administrative problem, he or she is working outside of revenue-generating activities 3. Frustrates advisors Sorting through data over dozens of pages of paper isn’t the frustrating part for most advisors. Often someone else on the team will enter that data into a CRM. The frustration sets in when advisors want to actually use that data and find that it’s trapped in a CRM, PDF, or paper form. I say “trapped” because you can’t easily export, visualize, and build reports from those formats.
- 6. page 5© 2015 Agreement Express Before You Get Started Gartner™ has produced excellent research on the hype cycle for technology adoption. Their conclusion is that the hype cycle for technology adoption looks like this: Gartner™ Hype Cycle While this graph is not about wealth management, it does serve as a fitting picture for how most wealth management firms roll out new digital products: 1. The technology is announced, and expectations soar for improved productivity and ease of use MATURITY VISIBILITY PEAK OF INFLATED EXPECATIONS TECHNOLOGY TRIGGER TROUGH OF DISILLUSIONMENT SLOPE OF ENLIGHTENMENT PLATEAU OF PRODUCTIVITY SOURCE: http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp
- 7. page 6© 2015 Agreement Express 2. Expectations reach a fever pitch just before the moment of implementation 3. Expectation turns to disillusionment as users begin to use the product, and find it difficult to use, and more limited in scope than they had dreamed 4. Things reach an all-time low as users are fully trained on the product and realize it will never do what they had hoped 5. Expectations adjust as users realize the tool does add some value to their lives This is actually something of a successful scenario. After all, user happiness is higher than before the product was introduced. But it certainly isn’t ideal. How can you implement a paperless onboarding process WHILE avoiding a disappointing product rollout? That’s what Part 2 is about.
- 8. page 7© 2015 Agreement Express Part 2: The Solution Mike Gardner’s Scale of Adoption Normally I wouldn’t be so presumptous as to name something after myself, but the resemblance between “Gartner” and “Gardner” was too good to miss. The Gartner™ cycle is helpful, but it certainly isn’t universal. After all, there are those rare occasions where we implement a new digital tool and the experience feels like this: We start to use a new tool or product with little fanfare or build-up, and we begin to find out how much it can do. As time goes on, we find that we are getting more and more value out of it. TIME USERADOPTION
- 9. page 8© 2015 Agreement Express Wherever there is a “Gardner” product adoption, there are always 3 things present, which are imperative for any paperless onboarding process adoption: 1. Convenience 2. Savings 3. Improvement 1. Convenience Convenience is king. It’s the reason Blockbuster went out of business. They may have had more selection than Netflix, but people would rather stay in their pajamas than actually see the movie they want to see. Your new paperless onboarding process has to “feel” easier for the advisor, back-office team, and the client as well. Consider your current process. You have to ask, “Is my new digital process more convenient than what my advisors are currently doing?” Currently, your advisors may only have to collect a paper document from the client, at which point a support team member may come collect the document from the advisor, relieving him or her of any further administration. While a new digital process may save money and improve the process overall, you will struggle to get buy-in from the advisors with a less convenient process.
- 10. page 9© 2015 Agreement Express 2. Savings This is the cost part of the equation: will this save our organization money? Of course, implementing an onboarding automation platform will cost money. But some digital onboarding platforms require costly IT help to get up and running, and hours of an IT person’s time just to change one setting in the back end. Ensure you run an ROI based on how much your current paper-based onboarding process is costing you now, versus how much your new system will cost you. Keep in mind the lion’s share of a digital implementation will be an up-front cost, with savings lasting for years after. 3. Improvement Does it actually improve the process? Or is it just convenient and cheap? Here are some ways you can benchmark improvement: • Client defection during the onboarding phase decreases • Advisor time on administration decreases • Surveys: advisor and client satisfaction increases, resulting in lower turnover and higher engagement
- 11. page 10© 2015 Agreement Express Next Steps Nuts and Bolts of Implementation How to Implement Paperless Onboarding With high-level strategy in place, you are now ready to actually implement your paperless onboarding process. For the purposes of this Mini Guide, we will cover 3 basic steps for going paperless in your onboarding process. 1. Choosing (or Building) a Digital Platform 2. Uploading All Forms into Your System 3. Creating Guided Web Pages for Your Biggest Onboarding Pain Points Step 1. Choosing (or Building) A Digital Platform This is the most important step in the process, as everything rises and falls with the quality of your onboarding automation platform. Here are some key questions you need to ask when selecting a platform:
- 12. page 11© 2015 Agreement Express Is it easy (and delightful) to use for clients? Does it reduce friction for advisors and administrators? Can it integrate with multiple data sources for fast KYC checks (and updates)? Is it easy to update and simple to maintain? Pros and Cons to Building Your Own System Step 2. Uploading All Forms into Your System Now that you’ve chosen (or built!) an onboarding automation platform, your first course of action is to create digital fillable forms that will replace the hundreds of paper document packages you have. Your firm has tax documents, risk profile documents, general data collection Pros • No timeline • Can easily change course • Easily customize to your exact needs Cons • Extremely costly and time- consuming to build • Lack specific onboarding IT expertise internally • Slow time-to-market • Difficult to release timely product updates without hiring large internal team
- 13. page 12© 2015 Agreement Express questions (name, marital status, address) that must be filled out and sent in the original form. After these forms are uploaded once, you’ll be able to recall them at any time, and have clients fill them out on a computer or mobile device (depending on your platform). Unlike a digital PDF, a smart form should catch errors automatically, so that when a client hits “submit”, you know you are receiving a 100% correct form. Step 3. Create Guided Web Pages for Your Biggest Pain Points In every firm, there are only a handful of forms that get filled out over and over again. Advisors are practically reaching for these forms before the client says what he or she needs. If fillables are a Prius, guided web pages are a Tesla. Your onboarding experience will go from good to great when you consolidate these forms and turn them into guided, adaptive web pages. What separates these web pages from fillables? • Easy to use: Matches client experience of entering information on a website. The best onboarding automation platforms will only ever ask for a piece of information once. All future forms will be pre- filled based on prior information given
- 14. page 13© 2015 Agreement Express • Adaptive: only asks for relevant information. For example, if they click “single” under marital status, all the “married” related questions will disappear. • Accessible: Your clients (and advisor team) will be able to access them from any web browser. The reason this is reserved for Step 3 is because it is time-consuming. It would take years to create guided web pages for the thousands of permutations of forms your firm has. Only the most frequently- recurring forms need to be converted.
- 15. page 14© 2015 Agreement Express Conclusion Creating a paperless onboarding experience for your wealth management firm is one of the first steps in improving the client-advisor experience. Onboarding is the first impression that you make with a client. If you do it right, it can make every subsequent action easier, such as: • Compliance • Product suggestions • Regular KYC updates • Client reporting We hope this guide gets you started in the right direction.
- 16. page 15© 2015 Agreement Express Your Digital Partner Agreement Express provides onboarding automation software for the financial services industry. We help wealth management firms become paperless by creating fillable forms and adaptive web pages. Still have questions after reading this Mini Guide? We’re here to help as your onboarding automation partners. Feel free to contact one of our onboarding experts with any of your questions. sales@agreementexpress.com See how Agreement Express helped HollisWealth reduce administration time by 500 hours a month: http://agreementexpress.com/case-study/holliswealth-manager-testimonial
- 17. page 16© 2015 Agreement Express About the Author Mike Gardner is CEO of Agreement Express, an onboarding automation platform for the financial services industry. Since joining Agreement Express in 2005, Gardner has evolved the product into an onboarding solution trusted by Fortune 500 financial institutions and top wealth management firms. Mike has become an onboarding thought leader with the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), Merchant Acquirers Committee (MAC), PYMNTS.com, and other online publications. He has helped top wealth management firms such as HollisWealth Scotiabank and Canaccord Genuity onboard clients faster while delivering an extraordinary client onboarding experience.