A recent report by Precursive found that 74% of enterprise organizations have a team dedicated to customer onboarding. 82% of the enterprise companies surveyed consider their client onboarding approach a key factor in delivering value.
To us, neither statistic seems shocking. The easier the onboarding process for new clients is, the more value you provide and the more satisfied your clients will be.
What is shocking to us is how many companies are still onboarding their clients manually. Automated client onboarding remains underutilized, particularly for Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), banks, lenders, and insurance carriers.
This could be due to a lack of tools to automate the process or information on the exact steps to take to automate the onboarding process successfully. And that’s what we’ll accomplish with today’s post: providing a blueprint for automating your client onboarding process in 10 simple steps.
10 Steps to Optimize Your Client Onboarding Process
To make it easier for you, we will also recommend ready-to-use templates for some of the steps so you can play around with the templates and explore how you can transform your current workflows.
1. Initial Client Outreach and Engagement
For RIAs:
Welcome emails can outline key steps to start the client relationship, such as scheduling a discovery call or explaining investment advisory services.
For Banks/Lenders:
Use automated outreach to guide potential clients through pre-qualification or loan application processes. Include targeted FAQs to reduce confusion and ensure clients remain engaged through the process.
For Insurance Carriers:
Send automated introductory emails with links to upload initial documents, explain policy options, or connect them to their dedicated agent. This can include tailored messages for different policy types, such as life, auto, or property insurance.
First impressions count. Automating your outreach with personalized welcome emails ensures consistent communication from the get-go. Feathery's automation capabilities allow you to automatically send a customized email when a client enters your onboarding funnel, welcoming them and outlining the next steps.
2. Collect Client Information and Documentation
For RIAs:
Automate the collection of KYC details, risk tolerance questionnaires, and investment preferences using intelligent forms. Integration with CRMs ensures this data is stored securely for compliance and advisory purposes.
For Banks/Lenders:
Simplify loan application workflows by automating the collection of financial documents, income verification, and co-applicant details. Feathery’s dynamic forms can adjust fields based on client inputs, reducing errors and improving efficiency.
For Insurance Carriers:
Streamline policy applications by automating the intake of client risk profiles, claims histories, and supporting documentation. Dynamic workflows can automatically route complex cases for manual review while handling straightforward ones instantly.
Gathering client data is often time-consuming and prone to errors. With intelligent, automated forms, you can streamline the process and ensure that clients provide all necessary information in one go. Feathery's dynamic form builder lets you create responsive, branded forms that efficiently collect and validate client data.
3. Verify Client Identity (KYC/KYB)
For RIAs:
Automate KYC checks using secure integrations with ID verification tools like Alloy or Plaid, ensuring clients meet regulatory standards before their accounts are created.
For Banks/Lenders:
Incorporate credit bureau integrations and fraud detection APIs to automate both KYC and creditworthiness assessments for loans.
For Insurance Carriers:
Leverage automated ID checks to verify client identities quickly and flag discrepancies before claims are processed or policies are issued.
Verifying client identity is essential to comply with KYC (Know Your Customer) and KYB (Know Your Business) regulations. Automating this process through integration with KYC/KYB verification tools ensures that your clients' identities are verified swiftly and securely, without additional manual input.
4. Risk Assessment and Profile Creation
For RIAs:
Risk tolerance is key to portfolio planning. Automate this by using tools that analyze client financial behavior, preferences, and past investment patterns. Automatically generate a recommended investment strategy based on this data.
For Banks/Lenders:
Automate loan risk assessments with algorithms that analyze income, credit scores, and financial histories. This speeds up loan approvals and ensures compliance with lending guidelines.
For Insurance Carriers:
Automatically create risk profiles using tools like Oscilar to assess client data, such as property location or driving history, ensuring policies are accurately priced and issued promptly.
Using automation, risk assessment tools can instantly analyze the client’s financial history and behaviors to build a comprehensive risk profile. This ensures your client’s onboarding process aligns with your internal risk management protocols. With Feathery, you can simply use integrations like Alloy and Oscilar.
5. Compliance and Regulatory Check
For RIAs:
Ensure SEC and FINRA compliance with automated checks for AML and investment suitability. Feathery can pre-configure compliance workflows tailored to advisory firms.
For Banks/Lenders:
Automate regulatory tasks such as Truth in Lending Act (TILA) disclosures, ensuring every document complies with local and federal lending laws.
For Insurance Carriers:
Streamline AML compliance by using Feathery to automate risk alerts, suspicious activity reports, and policy audits, reducing regulatory risk.
With built-in templates for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) compliance, Feathery helps you automate regulatory checks. This ensures that your client onboarding process meets the necessary compliance requirements without bottlenecks or delays.
6. Set Up Client Accounts
For RIAs:
Automate brokerage account creation or retirement account setup after verifying all required information. Send notifications to clients once the setup is complete.
For Banks/Lenders:
Automatically create accounts or loan portals with predefined configurations based on client data, reducing delays caused by manual setup.
For Insurance Carriers:
Automate policy account setup, including pre-filling forms and generating digital credentials for client access to policy details.
The next step is setting up accounts based on the client’s profile and preferences. Automation here ensures that once the client’s information has been verified, the account is set up without manual intervention, reducing errors like NIGOs (Not In Good Order) and speeding up the overall process.
7. Configure Services or Products for the Client
For RIAs:
Automatically allocate portfolio models to clients based on their risk tolerance and investment goals. Include optional upsells for additional services, such as tax planning.
For Banks/Lenders:
Pre-configure mortgage, personal loan, or credit card products with the terms matched to the client’s profile, ensuring a seamless onboarding experience.
For Insurance Carriers:
Use automated workflows to match clients with the most suitable policy options, pre-load coverage details, and enable digital acceptance of terms via e-signature.
After account setup, it’s time to configure the services or products the client will be using. Automating this stage with pre-configured templates and e-signature integrations helps you ensure a seamless process and get clients onboarded faster.
8. Client Introduction to Systems and Tools
For RIAs:
Provide automated access to investment platforms, including guides to manage portfolios or track performance.
For Banks/Lenders:
Send secure login credentials and guides for using online banking, payment tracking, or loan monitoring portals.
For Insurance Carriers:
Automate the delivery of tutorials or walkthroughs for navigating policyholder portals, filing claims, and accessing customer support.
Clients need easy access to your systems and tools. By automating this step, you can immediately send new clients the relevant onboarding materials, including login credentials, tutorials, and any other necessary documentation.
9. Provide Client Access and Credentials
RIAs: Login details for investment accounts and performance dashboards.
Banks/Lenders: Online banking or loan account credentials with layered security measures.
Insurance Carriers: Policyholder portal credentials, with optional two-factor authentication for added security.
To ensure clients receive and can use their access credentials securely, this step can be automated by triggering secure credential delivery as soon as accounts are set up. Feathery provides customizable templates that streamline credential distribution and ensure data security.
10. Ongoing Communication and Client Support
For RIAs:
Automate quarterly portfolio performance updates and send proactive rebalancing suggestions.
For Banks/Lenders:
Trigger payment reminders and updates on interest rates or new financial products.
For Insurance Carriers:
Send automated reminders for policy renewals and satisfaction surveys to continually improve client experiences.
Communication doesn't end once the client is onboarded. Automating follow-up messages and feedback requests ensures that clients feel supported and that you can continuously optimize the onboarding experience based on real feedback.
How to Streamline Your Client Onboarding Process with Feathery
Feathery is redefining the digital client onboarding process by automating traditionally manual tasks. With features like customizable onboarding forms, AI-powered document processing, and seamless integration with leading systems, Feathery reduces onboarding time, ensures compliance, and improves client satisfaction.
Customizable Onboarding Forms
Feathery’s dynamic form builder allows financial institutions to create responsive, fully customizable forms that can be tailored to the specific needs of each client. With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, financial institutions can design forms that align with their branding and enhance user experience, ensuring clients can quickly provide the necessary information.
AI-Powered Document Management
One of Feathery’s standout features is its AI-driven document processing, which automatically intakes and extracts structured data from documents like investment reports. This significantly reduces manual data entry and boosts operational efficiency. For example, Feathery can pull all relevant data from a Fidelity stock report and input it into the appropriate fields.
Automated Data Collection and Compliance
Feathery simplifies data collection and compliance by automating validation rules and integrating with identity verification tools. This ensures that all client information is complete, accurate, and complies with KYC, KYB and AML regulations, removing much of the administrative burden from teams while reducing the risk of human error.
Robust Integration Capabilities
Feathery integrates seamlessly with major financial tools and systems, including CRMs like Redtail and WealthBox, custodians such as Fidelity and Schwab, and open banking solutions like Plaid and Flinks. These integrations allow for automatic data syncing, account creation, and error reduction, ensuring a smooth and compliant onboarding process.
Personalization and Efficiency
Feathery’s conditional logic allows institutions to personalize onboarding by showing or hiding fields based on a client’s previous responses. This level of customization makes the onboarding experience more relevant and engaging, reducing the chances of client drop-off and improving overall satisfaction.
Security and Compliance Assurance
Feathery prioritizes data security, using encryption and strict privacy controls to protect sensitive information. These features ensure that institutions meet key regulatory standards like GDPR, fostering trust between financial institutions and their clients.
Continuous Optimization Through Analytics
With Feathery’s built-in analytics, institutions can monitor how clients interact with onboarding forms, gaining valuable insights to identify pain points and areas for improvement. This data enables continuous optimization of the onboarding process, helping to increase completion rates and client satisfaction over time.
Support and Implementation
Feathery offers dedicated support to help financial institutions implement their digital onboarding solutions, providing guidance on best practices and technical setup. The platform can also integrate with chatbots and AI tools to ensure that clients receive real-time support throughout the onboarding journey.
Case Study: Feathery Helps RIA Reduce Account Opening Time by 34%
In 2023, an RIA managing over $8 billion in assets sought to optimize their custodial account opening process. Their advisors faced significant inefficiencies due to manual, back-and-forth email exchanges, leading to errors and missing documentation.
Feathery stepped in with an automated solution. By providing smart forms and integrating directly with custodians like Schwab, Fidelity, and Pershing, Feathery enabled advisors to complete forms accurately the first time, reducing errors (NIGOs) and administrative delays. Additionally, Feathery’s integration with CRMs like Salesforce and financial planning tools like eMoney ensured data consistency across the board.
Results:
- 34% reduction in account opening time
- Fewer back-and-forth cycles between advisors and clients
- More time spent on client relationships, less on administrative work
“We've significantly reduced back-and-forth cycles between advisors and clients, making the onboarding process more enjoyable on both sides.” – Chief Operating Officer
Your Next Steps
- Start automating: Begin by identifying which parts of your client onboarding process can be automated.
- Try Feathery’s templates: Explore our library of templates to customize your onboarding forms.
- Reach out for a demo: Want to see how Feathery can help you automate your client onboarding process? Schedule a personalized demo today.
Also, check out these helpful articles:
Frequently Asked Questions
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Client onboarding typically involves welcoming the client, gathering necessary documents, verifying their identity (often to meet KYC or AML regulations), setting up accounts, and providing ongoing support. Feathery simplifies these steps by offering customizable, automated workflows. These workflows ensure that tasks like document collection and identity verification happen smoothly and in compliance with regulations, all while reducing the time needed to onboard each client.
An ideal onboarding process should be automated, secure, and compliant with regulations. It must also be personalized to meet the client’s specific needs and allow for clear communication throughout. Feathery enables financial institutions to build highly customizable onboarding forms, automate document submission, and ensure easy compliance, delivering a seamless and efficient onboarding experience for both the business and the client
Customer onboarding is the structured process of introducing new clients to your product or service. It includes collecting necessary details, verifying their identity, and setting up access to your system. The goal is to ensure the client feels comfortable and informed about how to use the service. With Feathery, this process becomes even more seamless by automating information collection and identity verification, reducing manual work, and improving the overall client experience from day one.
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