This is the third blog series on Skience’s integrations with Clearing and Custodial firms. We’ve previously covered our integrations with Fidelity and Pershing.
In this industry, it can be hard for some advisors to get behind the idea of “automation.” They might fear that by automating tasks, they aren’t delivering on their value of providing personalized and objective financial guidance to each of their clients.
But Skience’s account creation process offers a first-hand look at how automation actually improves the client experience, rather than taking away from it.
And if you’re an advisor who custodies with Schwab, there are numerous benefits to using Skience’s solution to opening accounts at your favorite custodian.
From reducing input errors to collecting eSignatures with ease, there are many reasons why automation is key to keeping your new clients happy.
Why the Client Onboarding Experience Matters
A client chooses to work with a financial advisor because they want someone who can organize and simplify their financial life.
While they’ve gotten a sense of your capabilities during initial introductions, the onboarding experience is the first time they’re really seeing your work in action. Use this opportunity to assure clients that their information is safe and that you’re here to make things easier.
As you begin the process of opening a new client account with Schwab, take advantage of Skience’s guided digital workflow. For example, Quik!® form automation saves advisors from unnecessary rekeying while clients experience the convenience of a single eSignature experience through DocuSign®.
This makes the process simple for clients, while helping advisors stay organized and improve accuracy when entering information. As a result, the guided digital workflow experience reduces the amount of back and forth—a benefit that many new clients will appreciate.
All documents and sensitive information is stored automatically in a singular, secure location. This gives advisors the advantage of knowing where clients are in the account opening process and what needs to be done to keep things moving forward seamlessly.
New Account Opening at Schwab
Advisors using Skience’s forms-based account opening process have the power to open multiple Schwab accounts at once via Advisors own DocuSign (aka Do it Yourself DocuSign). To make things easy, advisors can even prefill Schwab forms for new accounts with client data that’s automatically pulled over from Salesforce.
This both eliminates the time spent manually entering data from multiple households and reduces the chance of typos or errors. Advisors are also able to use their own DocuSign® account to send the documents to their clients and submit those forms directly to Schwab to expedite the entire account opening process.
Skience offers daily posting of Schwab’s account, balances, positions, and transactions which can be accessed by advisors and clients once a new account has been created.
How Skience and Schwab Work Together
Skience is built to keep advisors more organized and compliant as they open new Schwab accounts and store client data.
With the ability to automate the onboarding process, the days of paperwork crowding your desk are long gone. Skience Safe’s configurable indexing and auto-sweep of account openings provides a storage solution for important documents while eliminating the need for manual assistance.
This helps advisors know where each new account stands and what still needs to be done to finish the onboarding process.
Why Automating Is Important
With the number of client accounts you help open each year, leveraging workflows and automation can help streamline the client onboarding and new account opening processes across all of your advisors which also facilitates a better investor experience. Skience’s pre-built validations and guided workflows enables rules-based supervision that reduces cumbersome Not in Good Order (NIGO) transactions. Automated real-time OFAC/CIP checks plus license and registration tests make compliance easier while managing business risks.
The ability to offer a smooth onboarding process for new clients is an effective way to build a trusting relationship moving forward. If the process is slow, complex, and unorganized, clients may lose faith in your ability to make their financial lives easier.
Instead of putting unnecessary time and effort into manually rekeying client data, automation enables using your CRM as a single point of data entry allowing it to be reused across the new account opening, for pre-filling forms and other downstream processes. This gives you more time back in your day to focus on what really matters: nurturing prospects, answering client questions, and developing tailored solutions.
All of these are the personal touches that create a great client experience from start to finish.
Skience + Schwab
Embracing account aggregation saves advisors time and headache over the long run. Skience gives advisors a leg up by linking financial records to the CRM data to provide a holistic view of the financial activity at a client or household level.
Integrate client data from Salesforce to prefill account info, ensure all documents are stored in a secure, singular location, and make the eSignature experience as easy as possible for your clients. These are simple, yet effective, time-savers that will make all the difference during the onboarding process.
Digitize real-life wealth management interactions by using the integration between Skience and Schwab’s Advisory business. We’ve said this before, equipping your advisors for success starts with a solid client onboarding process. Streamlined account creation through Skience helps to greatly reduce typos, duplication, or rekeying errors. When you consider how many accounts are opened year after year and the time spent to open these accounts, this is a significant improvement for advisors and your firm.
Interested in learning more about how Skience simplifies your relationship with custodians?
Check out our Skience Fair series, hosted by some of Skience’s top thought leaders or get in touch to book a demo today.