Client Onboarding Checklist for Financial Advisors

When a new client is ready to begin working with you, the last thing they want is to be subjected to a clunky or disorganized onboarding process. After all, this is the beginning of your professional relationship and it’s a chance to wow them right out of the gate. Having a client onboarding checklist to follow makes it easier to bring them into the fold and start building trust from day one. However, making sure you have the right items on that checklist is key to your overall success.

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What to Include in a Financial Advisor Client Onboarding Checklist

When clients join your business, they typically go through different stages of the onboarding process. Segmenting onboarding into phases allows you to organize what needs to happen and when. Here are three phases to help you get started.

Phase 1: Laying the Groundwork

The first phase of new client onboarding largely revolves around gathering information and completing the necessary paperwork once an investor decides they’d like to work with you. During this phase, your client onboarding checklist may cover these seven steps:

• Sending an initial welcome message to the client thanking them for choosing your firm to work with.
• Entering the client’s details into your CRM system. (It can also help to ensure any lead generation service you’re using integrates with your CRM system.)
• Setting expectations with the client and disclosing information about the services you provide and their corresponding fees.
• Having the client review and sign the required contract.
• Ask the client to submit a detailed questionnaire or survey to glean some background information about their financial situation.
• Confirming the time and date of your first meeting, which may be in person or virtual.
• Answering any initial questions the client may have about your firm or what the meeting will entail.

If you’re meeting with a new client in person, consider what they’ll see and feel when they enter your office. A space that’s clean, calm and inviting is likely to make a better impression than one that feels cluttered or chaotic. Your staff should also be ready to greet new clients in a welcoming manner and direct them to where they need to go.

Phase 2: Meeting for the First Time

You may have already completed an initial consultation with a new client but your first meeting after signing a contract is an opportunity to dig a little deeper and learn more about what they need.

Your onboarding checklist for this phase may include:

• Introducing the client to other members of your team or your support staff.
• Reviewing the client’s financials and discussing what their goals are for working with you.
• Discuss expectations regarding what part each of you will play in the financial planning process.
• Obtaining any financial documents that you might need to develop a plan for managing your portfolio.
• Setting clients up with a personalized dashboard in your financial planning portal.
• Discuss your approach to financial planning and which metrics you’ll use to track their progress toward their goals.
• Explain how you’ll communicate and how often they can expect to hear from you.

Your initial meeting should focus on making clients feel comfortable rather than overwhelming them with information or leaving them with more questions than they arrived with. The goal is to build rapport so they feel at ease discussing their financial situation with you. There’s no need to make a sales pitch at this stage — this is simply the beginning of an ongoing conversation.

As the meeting wraps up, you can encourage the client to schedule a follow-up appointment. This gives both parties clarity on the next steps, and allows both of you to prepare for the discussion ahead.

Phase 3: Finalizing Onboarding

Once the initial meeting ends, there are still a few items left to cross off your onboarding checklist. The first is updating the client’s file to reflect any added information you’ve collected.

For example, during the meeting, you may have asked the client to bring copies of any or all of these documents:

• Bank account statements
• Retirement and investment account statements
• Statements for college savings accounts
• Life insurance policies
• Mortgage statements
• Debt statements for credit cards, car loans and student loans
• Declaration pages for property or vehicle insurance policies
• Documents relating to a business the client owns
• Documents relating to any other assets a client owns, such as artwork or real estate

Make sure to input all of this information into the client’s profile. This helps ensure both accuracy and completeness, now and in the future.

Beyond this step, it’s important to plan a follow-up email. It doesn’t have to be complex — just a simple message expressing gratitude for their time and inviting them to reach out with any questions before your next meeting. Adding a personal touch, such as a handwritten note or card, reinforces that they are valued as more than just a client.

Financial Advisor Client Onboarding Best Practices

While you’re creating a new client onboarding checklist, consider what you can do to enhance the client experience even further. That may include implementing some or all of these best practices:

• Consider replacing paper documents with digital ones and collecting client signatures electronically.
• Store client documents securely and provide clients with password-protected access.
• Ask the client which method of communication they prefer best and explain how often they should expect to hear from you.
• Familiarize every member of your team with the various steps in your onboarding process and let clients know to whom they can direct questions if they have them.
• Let clients know what free resources you provide and where to find them, which might include a library of education articles, free webinars or workshops and downloadable e-books.

Following best practices could help you maintain consistency so that each new client who comes your way is treated to the same experience. If you’re looking for more clients to onboard, however, that’s a whole different animal. If you’re struggling to perfect your onboarding process then you might struggle to find the time to market to your target audience properly. This could mean you need to find a strong lead-generation solution to help you find new clients.

SmartAsset’s Advisor Marketing Platform (AMP) offers financial advisors services like client lead generation, automated marketing and more. Learn about SmartAsset AMP today. It’s an end-to-end marketing solution that can help you streamline lead generation by not just connecting you with live leads but also developing email nurture campaigns for longer sales cycles. Consider automating your marketing more so that you can spend more time with your clients.

How Having a Smooth Onboarding Can Be Beneficial for an Advisor

Onboarding new clients is more than just a series of steps or tasks—it’s a strategy for growing a sustainable advisory business. There are the right ways to handle new client onboarding and wrong ones, and it’s important to know the difference. Here are six general ways you can benefit from having a streamlined onboarding process:

• Improved client experience: Clients with a positive experience from day one are more likely to stay with you long-term.
• Get more referrals: Those clients may also be inclined to refer friends, family, or coworkers, which could lead to additional referrals and potential clients.
• Improved internal efficiency: Effective onboarding systems help your business save both time and money.
• Improved client solutions: Collecting the right information during new client onboarding can give you a detailed framework for developing strategies to help them reach their financial goals.
• Improved client relations: Ensuring that onboarding goes off without a hitch can set a positive tone for your working relationship with the client so that they feel confident in your abilities.
• Better compliance: Having a standardized onboarding process in place means there’s no room for error or noncompliance with your firm’s best practices.

In short, if you want your clients to be excited about working with you and prepared to stick around for the long term, how you handle onboarding matters.

Bottom Line

Client onboarding should be a seamless experience for both you and your clients. Establishing a structured onboarding checklist and communicating the steps with your team can help to streamline the process, ensuring both efficiency and clarity for all parties involved. A well-defined set of guidelines enables your team to provide a consistent experience for every new client, while the right checklist helps maintain a smooth and organized approach as you welcome each new client to your firm.

Tips for Growing Your Advisory Business

• Once you’re comfortable with your onboarding process you may need to find ways to bring more clients in, faster. SmartAsset AMP (Advisor Marketing Platform) is a holistic marketing service that financial advisors can use for client lead generation and automated marketing. Sign up for a free demo to explore how SmartAsset AMP can help you expand your practice’s marketing operation. Get started today.
• Having the right CRM can help to ease the struggles of onboarding tremendously. When choosing a CRM for your advisory business, start by evaluating the full range of features and benefits it has to offer. Next, consider how seamlessly it will integrate into your current systems and which systems or software programs it might be able to replace. Lastly, consider the cost and the degree of value you’re getting for the money.

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