With New Digital Onboarding Enhancements, Schwab Advisor Services Makes it Easier to Open Multiple Client Accounts for Households
Schwab Advisor Services has enhanced its digital onboarding capabilities, allowing independent advisors to open and fund up to 10 client accounts in one streamlined process. This update follows a request from advisors to manage multiple accounts efficiently. In early usage, over half of new transactions involved multiple accounts, reducing paperwork and human error significantly. Schwab's continued investment in advisor technology, tripling its pre-acquisition spending, aims to simplify account management and improve the client experience. New features will support a broader range of account types in the future.
- Enhanced digital onboarding allows opening and funding of up to 10 new accounts efficiently.
- Initial usage shows more than half of new transactions involve multiple accounts.
- Significant reduction in paperwork and human error; NIGOs decreased from 30% to 4%.
- Upcoming features will support a wider range of account types and registrations.
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Schwab’s accelerated investment in advisor technology continues to yield new digital tools that help independent advisors pursue growth and increase efficiency
Building on the digital account open tool first introduced by Schwab in 2018, this latest enhancement fulfills a big ask among advisors who frequently need to open multiple accounts when bringing on a new household. In early usage of the new tool, more than half of new account-opening transactions involved multiple accounts, and some as many as eight accounts.
In this latest iteration, Schwab further simplified the onboarding process by letting advisors open multiple accounts, tailor them to their clients’ needs, and fund them — all in a single,
“Most clients don’t just have one account: their portfolios are held in an array of investment, retirement, trust, and other accounts. With the ability to open and fund multiple accounts with just a few clicks, our enhanced digital onboarding tool solves a big pain point for advisors,” said
The digital onboarding workflow also now gives advisors the option to upload up to 16 commonly used firm documents, such as welcome letters, advisory agreements and regulatory disclosures, for new clients to view, edit, acknowledge and approve. No pen or paper needed.
Save Time. Minimize Errors
Digital onboarding streamlines the time advisors spend on opening and funding new accounts and helps them deliver a better, more convenient experience for their clients. Eliminating paperwork also makes onboarding less prone to human errors that can cause delay. Since the digital tool was introduced, the percentage of documents not in good order (“NIGOs”) has dropped to 4 percent versus 30 percent for paper-based transactions due to its ability to validate input data from advisors and their clients.
In addition to being a key component of Schwab Advisor Center, enhanced onboarding capabilities are available through many popular third-party technology tools through Schwab’s third-party integrations, which allow advisors to pass up to 50 different data points into digital onboarding. Thanks to Schwab’s open-architecture capabilities, advisors can open and fund multiple accounts through their preferred CRM or financial planning tool.
“Advisors don't serve accounts; they serve individuals and families,” Dooher said. “Our
These capabilities also extend to advisors’ clients, who can use their
As Schwab prepares to complete its integration with Ameritrade, it is leveraging its combined strength to accelerate investment in advisor services technology — at a pace 3 times what it spent before the acquisition. A big part of that has been Schwab’s investment in digital onboarding.
Schwab achieved an industry-first in 2018 when it unveiled a simple,
Last year, digital onboarding was enhanced to let advisors open and fund new accounts in a single digital envelope while also allowing clients of advisors to add and edit their own information and documents within the same workflow. Advisors moreover can track the status of approvals and recall or resend digital envelopes when needed.
In the year ahead, digital onboarding will be further enhanced to support even more account types and registrations, including separately managed accounts. Additional digital capabilities that will enable firms to manage their existing client accounts, such as supporting a wider range of asset transfers and adding IRA beneficiaries, are coming later this year.
Enhanced digital onboarding is just one example of Schwab’s efforts to deliver advanced technology tools and streamline such routine tasks as account opening, account maintenance, and money movement. These changes benefit advisors, saving time and minimizing errors, and reduce friction for investors.
“In this era of digital everything, it’s clear advisors who embrace technology tools are better positioned to optimize their business and satisfy clients,” said
In its most recent RIA Benchmarking Study, Schwab found that firms with greater adoption of digital workflows gained efficiencies, spending on average
Schwab also continues to invest in and enhance its integration with DocuSign, available through Schwab Advisor Center, which will continue to be a significant part of its onboarding capabilities. DocuSign’s digital forms are an important tool for multi-custodial firms.
Visit us here to learn more about Schwab’s digital client-onboarding capabilities.
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At Charles Schwab we believe in the power of investing to help individuals create a better tomorrow. We have a history of challenging the status quo in our industry, innovating in ways that benefit investors and the advisors and employers who serve them, and championing our clients’ goals with passion and integrity.
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Schwab Advisor Services™ serves independent investment advisors and includes the custody, trading, and support of Schwab.
Independent investment advisors are not owned by, affiliated with, or supervised by Schwab. For informational purposes only.
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