How can RIAs leverage Salesforce FSC to improve client onboarding processes

Registered Investment Advisories (RIAs) often face challenges in their client onboarding processes. From unorganized emails and manual spreadsheet tracking to the chaos of compliance chasing signatures, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. However, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) provides a solution by centralizing the onboarding process, which improves visibility and accountability across teams.

Why Choose Salesforce FSC for Onboarding?

Salesforce FSC allows RIAs to consolidate their operations into one platform, eliminating the need to shuffle between multiple systems. The functionalities of tasks, document management, ownership, and automation mean that firms can enhance their onboarding processes significantly. Here’s how you can get started:

1. Utilize Action Plans

Implementing action plans—prebuilt task templates that auto-assign onboarding steps to appropriate team members—can standardize the onboarding process. For instance, action plans can include tasks like collecting account documents, sending risk profiles, and verifying beneficiaries. You can even tailor these templates depending on the client category (taxable, IRA, high net worth, etc.). This approach mitigates workload while promoting consistency.

2. Create Custom Stages

Adding custom stages to accounts or opportunities helps everyone understand where a client is in the onboarding journey. For example, you could use a field labeled “onboarding stage” with values such as discovery, document collection, compliance review, and funding. This transparency allows teams to create dashboards to track how many new clients are currently in each stage, which enhances operations management.

3. Implement Flows and Digital Intake Forms

Using Salesforce flows or tools like FormAssembly can streamline information collection from clients about their risk tolerance, account details, and more. This data can be pushed directly into Salesforce, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing back-and-forth communication with clients.

4. Document Checklist Tracking

To ensure that crucial documents like W-9s, advisory agreements, and trust documents are collected, either create a custom object or use third-party tools for checklist tracking. Additionally, dashboards can be built to show which clients are missing paperwork, providing further clarity into the onboarding status.

5. Integrate with Other Systems

For RIAs working with custodians such as Schwab or Fidelity, or planning tools like eMoney, leveraging integrations allows for automatic pushes of onboarding details downstream or importing data back into Salesforce. This integration reduces the workload and minimizes manual intervention.

Getting Started

If you’re new to Salesforce FSC or looking to improve your existing setup, consider starting with these steps:

1. Map Current Onboarding Steps: Document your existing onboarding process to have a clear vision of your starting point.
2. Build Action Plan Templates: Create at least one or two action plan templates to begin automation.
3. Add Stage Fields: Implement a stage field in your account or opportunity object for effective progress tracking.
4. Utilize Flows: Deploy Salesforce flows to mitigate excessive email exchanges with clients.

Fixing the chaos during onboarding can drastically improve client satisfaction and team efficiency. We’ve worked with numerous RIAs transitioning from Tamarack to FSC and can help identify common pain points. If you would like assistance in mapping or building an effective onboarding setup in your organization, don’t hesitate to reach out. We can provide a working onboarding setup in a sandbox environment and guide you through tailored implementations for your team.

For queries, feedback, or personalized assistance, feel free to drop your comments or contact us directly. We would be happy to connect!