Why Manual Onboarding Is Costing You Clients (and Time)

Outdated Processes Aren’t Charming

We all love a little nostalgia—mix tapes, movie rentals, Saturday morning cartoons. But endless PDFs and manual data entry? That’s the kind of throwback no one misses. Unfortunately, many advisory firms are still stuck in that past, and it’s costing them dearly in both time and client trust.

The latest report from PreciseFP, the award-winning data gathering and client engagement solution from Docupace, Manual Data Is Holding You Back, makes it clear: advisors are spending more hours wrestling with compliance tasks and duplicate data entry than they are meeting with clients. One-third say there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. That inefficiency doesn’t just create frustration—it stifles growth.

Investors Expect More

Clients today live in a digital-first world. They order groceries from their phones, track packages in real time, and binge personalized playlists built just for them. When their first interaction with a financial advisor is a clunky intake form or a stack of PDFs, it’s a jarring mismatch.

Deloitte notes that client experience—not portfolio performance—is now the biggest differentiator in wealth management. EY echoes that personalization is no longer a “nice-to-have” but a baseline expectation. A poor onboarding experience signals that a firm is behind the curve before the relationship even begins.

The Advisor Burden

The industry can’t afford inefficiency. Cerulli projects that over 100,000 advisors will retire in the next decade, leaving fewer professionals to serve a growing number of investors. Advisors who remain must do more with less. Yet for every hour spent in a client meeting, many burn two more hours preparing data or re-keying it into systems.

PwC’s Wealth Management Insights report underscores the urgency: rising costs and shrinking margins mean firms must digitize or risk falling behind competitors who already have. Manual onboarding is more than an inconvenience—it’s a direct threat to productivity and profitability.

Efficiency = Trust

Manual processes don’t just waste time; they open the door to costly mistakes. Delays in onboarding mean delays in investment decisions. Typos in client data erode confidence. Over time, these small inefficiencies create big trust issues.

Digital onboarding, powered by PreciseFP, flips the script. Secure, customized, and integrated digital forms allow data to flow seamlessly across more than 30 platforms. That means fewer errors, faster onboarding, and more time for advisors to focus on what really matters—building strategies, relationships, and peace of mind for clients.

The Competitive Edge of Digital-First Firms

Onboarding is more than paperwork—it’s the first impression clients get of your firm. A smooth, digital-first experience communicates efficiency, professionalism, and trustworthiness. Firms that embrace automation will retain more clients, scale faster, and deliver higher-value services. Those that don’t will continue losing ground to competitors who already have.

The lesson is simple: digital onboarding isn’t just a process improvement. It’s a competitive advantage.

Learn more about what PreciseFP can do for your firm here.