Account Opening Pain Points in the Front Office: Advisors in the Dark
Report Summary
Account Opening Pain Points in the Front Office: Advisors in the Dark
Immature account opening processes lead to advisor dissatisfaction and client attrition.
Boston, September 18, 2012 – A new report from Aite Group reveals front-office pain points associated with the account opening process at U.S. broker-dealers. Based on an Aite Group survey of 500 U.S. financial advisors, the report reviews advisors’ current and desired account opening capabilities for brokerage, mutual fund, 529 plan, and annuity accounts. The report also provides insight into account opening improvement initiatives at brokerage firms and discusses the different types of account opening solutions that firms should consider when automating their processes.
Financial advisors continue to face inefficient account opening processes laden with paperwork that must be filled out by hand and lacking in workflow visibility across account types. While immature account opening processes negatively impact both the front and back office, the front-office issues are of particular concern. Advisors are less satisfied with their firm when its account opening solutions are not integrated with other applications and when they are left in the dark following the submission of account opening paperwork. In addition, many surveyed advisors say they lose clients during account opening processes that take too long due to errors.
“Firms must take the time necessary to understand the causes of inefficient account opening, whether people- or technology-related, and to study the costs of these inefficiencies for both the front and back office,” says Sophie Schmitt, senior analyst with Aite Group and author of this report. “Only then will brokerage firms be in a position to design improvement projects that can achieve significant return on investment in the form of higher client and advisor retention and lower operating costs."
Vendor solutions mentioned in this report are Appway, Doxim Inc., DST Brokerage Solutions, EAI Information Systems Inc., Fenergo, Genpact, jaccomo, National Financial Services LLC, NexJ, Pegasystems, Pershing LLC, Polaris Financial Technology, Quadron Data Solutions, Scivantage, SunGard, and Tata Consultancy Services.
This 41-page Impact Report contains 21 figures and five tables. Clients of Aite Group’s Wealth Management service can download the report.