PIMFA WealthTech, the market network and technology platform created with principal strategic partner Morningstar, and WealthOS, the operating system for digital wealth management, a leading financial technology company, today (16 October 2023) invite FinTechs to participate in a new Tech Sprint to meet a challenge focused on digitising and automating the client onboarding process.

Both PIMFA WealthTech, launched last year by PIMFA, the trade association for the wealth management, investment services and the investment and financial advice industry, and WealthOS, are focused on bringing wealth managers and FinTech together to accelerate digital transformation in the sector.

The Tech Sprint will be overseen by a Client Onboarding Advisory Group, chaired by Jaclyn Anderson, Head of Strategic Change at discretionary wealth manager Quilter Cheviot.

PIMFA WealthTech wants to use this latest Tech Sprint to highlight FinTech solutions and processes that can help financial institutions onboard clients more efficiently. For example, by using automation technologies to improve productivity in procedures such as data extraction, searching third-party websites and orchestrating onboarding workflows across multiple vendors.

Automation could allow wealth managers to reduce the time involved in onboarding new clients and potentially reduce the cost by up to 50% with significant increases in the accuracy of work completed. Such benefits would also contribute to an improved client onboarding experience, enabling wealth managers to build better long-term relationships and increase client conversion.

Adopting FinTech solutions to automate client onboarding and improve customer experiences also offers other numerous benefits to wealth managers, including enhanced efficiency, higher customer satisfaction, increased security and compliance, cost reduction, and richer data-driven insights.

Embracing FinTech in these areas allows organisations to differentiate themselves, provide seamless customer experiences, and stay competitive in a rapidly evolving financial landscape. As technology continues to evolve, the potential of FinTech in client onboarding and automation will only grow, solidifying its importance in the future of the advisory, wealth and investment management industry.

Jaclyn Anderson, Chair of the PIMFA Wealth Tech Client Onboarding Advisory Group and Head of Strategic Change at Quilter Cheviot, commented: “Wealth Managers currently spend considerable time and effort onboarding new clients, with extensive regulatory and compliance requirements that must also be met.

"New providers and technologies have the potential to help the industry save time and money, increase efficiency, and enable businesses to capture client data in a standardised digital format that can be used to create a much more impactful and simpler client onboarding journey.

“We are pleased to be working with PIMFA WealthTech and WealthOS on this important Tech Sprint and invite FinTechs to participate and show the investment management industry the breadth of innovation and support they can offer.”

Shri Krishnansen, Chief Commercial Officer at WealthOS, commented: “As Will Rogers said, you never get a second chance to make a first impression; that’s why onboarding is such a crucial step in securing client relationships. However, across the wealth management industry today, a combination of disjointed and resource-heavy onboarding processes threatens client acquisition. This too, amidst a backdrop of improving experiences in other industries – entertainment, e-commerce and even retail banking – that have set a high bar for client expectations across all the services they procure.

"We built WealthOS to bring startup-like agility and speed of digital transformation to wealth managers through our easy-to-compose, modular backend platform. So, we’re thrilled to partner with industry leader PIMFA Wealth Tech in powering innovation efforts across the industry, beginning with that all-important first impression of client onboarding.”