Advice360°: How Digital Onboarding aids wealth advisors

Advice360°™ is a new series designed to help advisors increase their productivity using our digital wealth management software. Learn what other wealth advisors are doing to benefit their practices.

In our second installation, Meredith Connell shows wealth managers how Advisor360°’s account opening tools can save them time.

Wealth advisors are working in a time of great disruption. They find themselves at the confluence of shifting age demographics and new technologies that are changing the way assets are brought under management. As we make our way through a decade that will witness the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, the stakes have never been higher.

At Advisor360°, we are constantly looking for ways to help wealth managers thrive in this new environment, one that is fundamentally changing how advisors communicate with clients and grow their business.

That’s why we’re so pleased to announce that Digital Onboarding is now a permanent fixture of Advisor360°’s Enterprise offering. We believe it’s not only a critical next step in the growth of our business, but more importantly for our clients, in the growth of theirs.

The new solution now allows wealth advisors to open new client accounts faster than ever before. With this week’s launch, our clients’ advisors can enjoy unprecedented speed and efficiencies as new accounts can be opened in as little as 90 seconds—start to finish!

Advisors can also use Digital Onboarding features—such as enhanced pre-fill and additional data collection (to help comply with Reg BI), disclosure questions, and type-ahead address functionality—across all business lines on the platform. Advisors can bundle and send all account-related forms to clients through DocuSign® for unified and seamless e-Signing.

Early feedback: “It’s a game changer”

But don’t just take my word for it. These are some of the messages I received from wealth managers this past month:

“I opened my first account yesterday—an IRA—and Digital Onboarding is a game changer!”
—Joan Bernardi, Crabtree Financial Services

“The new Digital Onboarding capability is definitely a modern and efficient experience.”
—Sue Romaine, Blue Hills Wealth Management

Most of the wealth advisors we’ve spoken with have been highly complimentary of the new DocuSign bundling experience as well as the Optional Features section. Advisors can now add any optional features or funding instructions to a new account—including adding POAs, standing instructions, transfer of assets, and more—which prompts the necessary forms in the paperwork bundle with all required data pre-filled.

New features, new benefits

Those familiar with Advisor360°’s Client Account Wizard will have no trouble transitioning to our new, more intuitive platform offering. Some of its new features include:

• A new rules engine that supports account opening and editing of all business lines and registration types with the added flexibility to adjust and evolve as regulatory policies change and firms introduce new business requirements
• An easy-to-use navigation panel that lets you move through account sections effortlessly
• The ability to add client account data at your leisure and return later to finish up where you left off—and what’s more, every time you select Next, the tool autosaves your progress
• Address validation, which helps eliminate incorrect addresses
• An enhanced account dashboard that’s a central place to view new and in-progress accounts—we’ve included progress indicators to show account sections that are complete, in progress, and those that need additional work
• An intuitive pre-fill feature so you can choose existing information and avoid retyping the same information
• The ability to bundle and send all account-related forms to your client through DocuSign, for unified and seamless e-Signing 

By increasing automation and drastically reducing—and even eliminating—the time spent on manual steps, everyone wins. Advisors, their staff, and the home office will recoup a noticeable amount of time when setting up and funding new accounts.

These efficiencies are possible because of Advisor360°’s open architecture and pre-built integrations with third-party applications (remember address verification?).

To meet great expectations, you need to provide a great experience

Any strong advisor-client working relationship starts with a great onboarding experience. As these relationships deepen over time, you need the right technology in place—one that’s flexible enough to support and sustain this growth. That’s why we’ve brought Digital Onboarding to our Enterprise clients—and trust me, this is only the beginning.

I believe our Digital Onboarding offering can be a true competitive advantage in an advisor’s growing practice. Not only have we improved the onboarding experience for both digital natives and those who are used to a more traditional process, but we’ve also brought a new level of efficiency to the wealth advisor’s practice, no matter its size and scale.

Learn more about Advisor360°’s Digital Onboarding capabilities.

Advice360° offers tips and guidance to advisors on increasing their productivity through the Advisor360° wealth management software. Learn what other advisors are doing to benefit their practice.

Meredith Connell is Product Manager, Account Operations, responsible for the strategic direction of operations tools used to open, edit, fund, and act on investment accounts, emphasizing reduced manual and repetitive tasks for home offices and advisors through automation.