APRIL 13, 2018
The Quest for Frictionless Onboarding: Why
By Georgios Lekkas
Innovation Director
Reading time: 2 min
OWINTALK | BEHIND BUSINESS, BEYOND NEWS
Client-centered innovation
The rapid advancements in technology have opened a wide range of possibilities for innovation in the financial services industry. And in this realm, one of the key courses of action is improvement of user experience.
The new Wealth Management paradigm dictates that firms move beyond being a transaction-based service provider, to having a positive impact on clients’ lives and goals. It is no longer enough to just “do the job”: to book transactions, calculate investment performance, generate a client report.
All processes should be reviewed in order to maximize the benefit to the client, and to a second degree, also to the advisor. Because if the advisor dedicates less time to time-consuming chores, he/she has more time to spend with clients.
Onboarding needs
Client onboarding is the most delicate and critical process in financial services. Failings in other kinds of processes is serious, but in onboarding, failure can be measured in terms of:
- lost clients, if during a process that lasts several weeks, clients change their minds;
- missed investment opportunities, if processes take too long to complete;
- damaged reputation, if a “digital” investment firm reveals its slow inner workings;
- high costs, when paper-based onboarding needs a lot of clerical work and is accompanied by errors and repeated requests for corrections;
- regulatory issues, if to accelerate, one chooses to cut corners and allow dubious practices.
In the new digital era, onboarding needs to cut waiting times, decrease manual processing and satisfy the new expectations set by clients.
How does one do that? We’re going to explain it very soon.
