Automating client onboarding for a wealth advisory firm

The situation

A wealth advisory firm was onboarding a steady flow of new clients, each with policies spread across several life companies, pension providers, and investment platforms. Onboarding a client meant notifying every provider to move servicing rights across, a process known as transfer of agency.

The firm ran on capable, well-known systems. The trouble was that none of them talked to each other. During onboarding, the same client details were entered by hand into one system after another. Provider notifications were drafted individually. Responses landed in different inboxes over several weeks. There was no single place to see what was in flight.

The problem

We ran a dploy.ai AI Operations Assessment to understand where the firm's time actually went. The onboarding and transfer process stood out.

• The same personal data, including PPS numbers and policy references, was re-keyed across several systems, and every re-entry risked an error that could stall a transfer for weeks.
• No one could say, at a glance, how many transfers were open, which were overdue, or which were waiting on a client signature.
• Follow-ups depended on someone remembering. When staff were on leave, transfers went quiet.
• The process just about coped at the current volume and would not survive the firm's growth without another hire.

Taken together, this one workflow was consuming close to the equivalent of a full-time role.

What we did

Rather than replace any of the firm's systems, we built a working tool that sits across them and handles the transfer workflow end to end.

• Read the data once. Client details are pulled from the system that already holds them, so the operator stops re-typing.
• Draft each instruction correctly. The tool knows each provider's requirements and generates the right instruction for each one, ready for review.
• Track everything in one view. A single dashboard shows every transfer across every client and provider, its stage, and anything overdue.
• Chase on time. Transfers past their expected response time are flagged automatically, with a follow-up drafted for approval.

How we did it safely

Because the workflow touches client personal data, it was built to a regulated standard from the start.

• Nothing sends on its own. Every draft is reviewed and sent by a person.
• Only the data each transfer needs is used, never the full client file.
• Every instruction, send, and status change is logged.
• Data stays within the EU.

The firm ends up faster and better governed at the same time.

The outcome

The tool removes the re-keying and the guesswork from onboarding and gives the firm a single, live view of its transfers for the first time. The manual load that was heading toward another salary becomes a supervised, mostly automated process. The next step is moving it into daily use across the team and measuring the hours returned.

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