Client Onboarding,
Automated
Most firms still onboard clients with a chain of emails, attached PDFs and a spreadsheet someone re-keys into the CRM on Friday. We replace the whole thing with one portal that verifies, signs, provisions and keeps a clean audit trail for the regulator.
100 days
CORPORATE ONBOARDING, HIGH END (MCKINSEY)
68%
ABANDON FINANCIAL APPLICATIONS (SIGNICAT 2022)
Days
TO SIGNED CLIENT, NOT WEEKS
Stop onboarding by email.
Fenergo's 2024 survey of 450+ C-suite executives at banks found 67% had lost clients to slow KYC. McKinsey puts corporate banking onboarding at up to 100 days, with KYC and account opening eating more than 40% of it. The same drag shows up wherever onboarding is split across inboxes.
The work itself isn't hard. The problem is the same client details get re-asked, re-typed, re-uploaded and re-signed across four systems and six inboxes. Every handoff is somewhere a new client can quietly give up.
One portal, the integrations done properly, and the back office stops being the bottleneck.
EMAIL-AND-PDF ONBOARDING
- Welcome email, attached intake form, chase, chase
- ID and proof of address by reply, sat in an inbox
- AML check on a separate site, screenshot the result
- Engagement letter printed, signed, scanned, emailed
- Re-keyed into CRM, billing and the ops board
- "Where's that evidence?" three months later
ONE PORTAL
- Branded portal, link sent, client knows what's next
- ID&V and address verified in the flow, not by reply
- KYB, sanctions and PEP screened automatically
- Engagement letter signed in-portal with an e-signature audit trail
- CRM, billing and ops board provisioned by webhook
- Every step, timestamped, in one audit log
Every onboarding has the same five steps.
Wealth managers, accountants, solicitors, recruiters, SaaS firms. The names change. The pattern doesn't. Once you can see it laid out, you can build it once.
Intake
Smart forms branched by client type. Individual, sole trader, limited company, partnership. Save and resume, mobile-first, no PDFs to print.
Verify
ID&V via Entrust Onfido, Yoti, Veriff or Stripe Identity. KYB through Companies House and Creditsafe. Sanctions and PEP via ComplyAdvantage or SmartSearch.
Sign
Engagement letter, T&Cs, DPA. Pre-filled from intake, signed in-portal via Docusign, Adobe Acrobat Sign or Dropbox Sign. Evidence trail included.
Provision
CRM record created, billing set up, ops board populated, welcome pack sent, Slack channel spun up. The bits your team currently does by hand on a Friday afternoon.
Audit log
Every form field, document, check result and signature, timestamped and held against the MLR 2017 retention period. The file you wish you'd had at the last SRA or FCA visit.
Where we come in.
Same pattern every time: audit the flow, pick the vendors, build the portal, migrate the live work.
Fixed-scope phases, working software, you own the code. No twelve-month transformation programme.
BOOK AN ONBOARDING AUDITOnboarding audit
Send us your current intake form, your engagement letter and a screen recording of how a new client gets set up. We map every step, every system, every handoff. You get a one-page report on what to automate first and what to leave alone. Scope and price up front.
Pick the right vendors
ID&V, KYB, sanctions, e-sign and Open Banking all have mature APIs now. The work is choosing providers that price sensibly at your volume, integrate cleanly, and don't trap the rest of the build. We tell you which fits your stack.
Build the portal
Branded for your firm, hosted on your domain. Intake, verification, signature, provisioning, audit log. Wired into the CRM, billing, ops board and email you already use. Your team uses it the same week.
Migrate and iterate
Existing clients get tidied into the same data model so the audit log is complete. New fields, new client types, new integrations as you find them. Small, steady releases, no big rebuilds. We're available on retainer afterwards if you want us to keep building.
We build for both sides of the line.
If you're FCA, SRA, HMRC, ICAEW or ACCA-supervised for AML, the evidence trail matters. If you're not, the same flow still beats email. Either way, the portal keeps the work in one place.
FCA. SRA. HMRC. ICAEW. ACCA.
- CDD under MLR 2017 Regulation 28, with EDD under Regulation 33 where risk requires it
- Sanctions screening against the current UK Sanctions List, with OFSI guidance where financial sanctions apply
- Companies House identity verification tracked for new directors and PSCs under ECCTA 2023
- Legal-sector file opening that records risk assessment, CDD status and any delayed verification reason
- MLR 2017 retention periods and structured export for regulator visits
B2B services, SaaS, agencies.
- One link, one flow, one place to check progress
- Signed contract, paid first invoice and provisioned account in a single sitting
- Branded so it feels like part of your product, not a third-party form
- UK GDPR lawful basis, privacy notice and retention schedule built into the flow
- The bit that turns a "yes" into a working client, automated
The fines are getting bigger and the clients more impatient.
Three things the regulator and the market have made very clear in the last few years.
NatWest, £264.8m criminal fine.
The FCA's first criminal prosecution under the Money Laundering Regulations. Fowler Oldfield, a Bradford jeweller, deposited around £365m with NatWest, including around £264m in cash. NatWest's monitoring treated some cash deposits as cheques.
Starling Bank, £28.96m.
FCA found 54,359 accounts opened for 49,183 high or higher-risk customers in breach of a voluntary requirement, and a sanctions screening system that only checked a fraction of the list. The Final Notice names onboarding controls that didn't scale with growth.
68% give up.
Signicat's Battle to Onboard 2022 surveyed 7,600 consumers across 14 European countries and found 68% had abandoned a financial application in the previous year, up from 63% in 2020.
Sources: Fenergo KYC Trends 2024, McKinsey corporate onboarding, FCA NatWest press release, FCA Starling Final Notice, Signicat Battle to Onboard 2022.
The ones we get asked first.
Which ID&V provider should we use?
Depends on volume, geography, and what you're using it for. We use providers such as Entrust Onfido, Veriff, Yoti and Stripe Identity for ID&V, then check the GOV.UK digital identity register if right-to-work or DBS checks are in scope. We pick during the audit, you sign the contract with the provider, no agency markup.
Are e-signatures actually legally binding here?
Yes. Under the UK eIDAS regulation, an electronic signature can't be denied legal effect or admissibility solely because it's electronic. For standard B2B engagement letters and T&Cs, a simple electronic signature is usually enough. For deeds, witnessed documents or anything higher-risk, we flag the execution rules instead of treating it like a normal PDF.
What about UK GDPR and the DPIA?
Onboarding handles identity documents, and some flows use biometric or special category data. Where the processing is likely to be high risk, UK GDPR requires a DPIA. We give you a draft tailored to your flow: lawful basis per data type, retention schedule, processor list, transfer mechanism. You sign it off with your DPO. The privacy notice goes into the portal at the point of collection, not buried at the bottom.
We already use HubSpot / Salesforce / Pipedrive. Are you replacing it?
No. The portal feeds your CRM, doesn't replace it. The salesperson still works in the CRM. The portal takes over the moment they mark a deal "won", runs the onboarding, then writes the verified client back. Same with Xero, QuickBooks, Stripe and the ops board.
How long does a first version take?
Days for a working portal handling one or two client types, used for real onboardings from day one, while we add the edge cases and the second client type alongside.
What about the clients we've already onboarded?
Migrated. The PDFs in the shared drive, the screenshots of AML results, the engagement letters in someone's inbox. Cleaned up, stored against the right client, indexed in the audit log. The day you switch over, the back catalogue is searchable the same way as new clients.
Who owns the code and the data?
You do. Source code, data, IP, integrations. We can host it for you on your own infrastructure, or hand it to your team. No lock-in. If you want to switch vendors later (a different ID&V provider, a different e-sign tool) the portal is built to allow that.
How much does it cost?
The audit is fixed-fee. The first portal is priced per phase, scoped against how many client types you cover. We tell you the number before we start. Third-party fees (ID&V, e-sign, sanctions) you pay direct.
Send us your intake form.
Thirty minutes on a call. You'll get a clear answer on which bits of your onboarding to automate first and which vendors fit your stack.