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Best Practices for Wealth Management
Best Practices for Wealth Management

See how to use SideDrawer to help streamline your business.

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Written by Support
Updated over a week ago

Process

SideDrawer Recommendation

Setting up clients

A central theme to SideDrawer is data ownership and control. A client’s tax return sent to you – is your property or theirs? Your estate plan prepared for them – is your property or theirs?

If the data is shared, should you be able to delete it without their knowledge? As a result, we recommend setting up client SideDrawers under your own ownership, and adding the clients as Collaborators. This provides you with maximum flexibility, and the SideDrawer can always be transferred or data ownership shared with only a few clicks.

Leverage your

existing storage for

more security and

productivity

If you are onboarding existing clients and are using Sharepoint, Dropbox, Google Drive, or OneDrive, reach out to us to find out how to leverage our storage sync feature.

Like working on

files locally?

SideDrawer Desktop is a local computer sync application that allows you to use SideDrawer in a more traditional computer file/folder environment. This will enhance your experience and streamline file work on your local computer.

While we already have back-ups in place, you can also use this approach to back-up onto your entire computer back-up if needed.

Setting up Content Packages

Content Packages are a great way to simplify the delivery of generic documents (marketing material, newsletters, bio’s, forms, engagement letters etc). We recommend creating Content Packages with groupings of documents so they can be delivered as needed. For example:

Content Package: Introduction

This is best to include simple, and minimal documents.

We suggest including:

  • Bio of firm, advisor, team in a Record titled “Introduction to <Firm Name> in Legal, Insurance or Investments tile (wherever you prefer)

  • Two to three marketing newsletters in a Record titled “Quarterly Newsletters” in Investments tile

  • Principles, Policies or Disclaimers – if you are forthcoming with a descriptive approach to your guidelines (eg Respect & Dignity Principles), this is good to include in this Content Package

Content Package: Prospect

  • This is a good opportunity to include legal documents that a client would want to be aware of, should you both decide to move forward. (Some of these items can also be substituted for Info Requests.)

These are the recommended documents:

  • Engagement letter

  • Fee schedule (if you don’t have it on your website, or if you are required to disclose it)

  • Consent forms (in case you work with additional professionals and need consent from the client)

  • Disclaimer forms (if you have formal disclaimer policies that need to be shared)

Content Package: Engagement

  • This is where you can include actual onboarding forms, such as fillable PDFs required by you or your firm for discovery or account opening perspectives, as well as additional disclaimer forms. (Some of these items can also be substituted for Info Requests.)

These are the recommended documents:

  • Onboarding forms

  • Client Information forms

  • KYC forms

Setting up Info

Requests

Info Requests are a great way to simplify the collection of important

client data and documents, with an excellent client experience.

This approach to data and document gathering typically results in a 3- 5x faster client response, a 65% reduction in email volume on the gathering process, and a savings of about 1 hour per day.

You are also able to support your client through a screen-share or adding information yourself which your client can correct or amend as needed.

We recommend creating Info Requests that are bite-sized and grouped based on the type of information you’re collecting. For ad-hoc requests, you can use the Simple File Request functionality.

Info Request: Introduction

  • This Info Request is helpful to collect basic information, and open ended questions about why they’re interested in your services.

Questions to use:

  • Name, address etc.

  • Open ended questions like “Why are you seeking financial help?”, “What have you done in the past?”

  • Questions around life goals, behaviour and approach to risk/lifestyle, etc.

  • We suggest avoid inquiring about financial matters or asking for tax returns in the initial Info Request

Info Request: Prospect - Initial

  • In this Info Request you may include more probing questions about finances, dollar-values, tax situation, etc.

  • Tax document requests (more for evidence to support client responses)

  • Investment or bank statements (more for evidence vs all)

  • Multi-option questions around their service needs

Info Request: Prospect - Detailed

  • Similar to above, but can include far more comprehensive and detailed document requests. You can Duplicate the above Info Request and add more.

  • We suggest have two different versions as your introduction to the prospect could be unqualified or qualified, implying that they may already be well screen and ready to begin in which case you can send the second request.

  • As it will be readily available, it will expedite the process.

Info Request: Full Onboarding

  • Depending on the use of your back-end service provider’s forms, your own fillable PDFs, we can give specific guidance around the full onboarding info request.

  • We have typically seen success with breaking up the forms into the following categories:

  • Personal and family information

  • Estate & Trust

  • Income & Expenses

  • Assets & Liability

  • Beneficiaries

  • Businesses

This allows you to usually break each Info Request into sections of 10- 20 questions which can be streamlined.

Since each Info Request has its own percentage completed indicator, the client will feel as if they’ve accomplished a lot when they’re completing the individual sections.

Our support team can provide additional guidance during your onboarding.

Prospecting

Prospecting requires a lot of time invested up front. As new leads come in, you need to gather information to determine if they meet your requirements, and if they are a good match for your business.

You also don’t want to inundate them with too much being asked upfront. It’s why we recommend breaking up the Content Packages and Info Requests to give you the flexibility based on which stage or how qualified your lead may be.

The Info Requests also provide a great way to determine whether your lead is actually interested in pursuing further. You’ll be able to see how much of the Info Request they’ve answered without requiring you to ‘chase’ them for answers, or spend valuable time calling/reaching out.

We recommend:

1. Creating a simple Info Request that has a few questions and perhaps asks for an ID, pay stub or tax statement.

2. Creating a Content Package that contains:

  • Marketing material such as a PDF of your firm, your bio, and your team members.

  • One or two recent newsletters to showcase how you communicate with your clients.

  • Perhaps an engagement letter so the lead can read through how you are likely to engage if you were to move forward.

  • Learn more about Content Packages here.

3. Create SideDrawers for prospects and add the Content Packages and Info Requests during the creation process.

Converting

Prospect Lead

to Onboarding

  • Each firm has various onboarding processes, some are manual while others have varying degrees of automation.

  • When a Prospect or Lead moves to the Onboarding stage, you can move them to the next stage by sending then additional Content Packages or Info Requests.

  • If these clients are not in SideDrawer yet, you can bulk import prospects or clients.

  • Collecting client data is common to both, regardless of the level of automation.

  • We suggest using Info Requests to create standardized, templates forms that can be re-sent over and over.

Or, for ad-hoc requirements, use the Simple File Request functionality.

Helping senior

clients /

connecting with

family

If some of your senior clients find it difficult to navigate a computer but are comfortable on tablet/mobile, let them know they can download the free version of SD on iOS or Android.

We also encourage you to have your senior clients add their adult children as Collaborators on the SideDrawers to help if needed.

This will allow you to maintain the security through your organization, maintain your productivity and efficiency, as well as drive a relationship with your clients’ children.

We all know that turnover of a book is high when the primary relationship/client passes on, so this is a great way to help with household retention.

Get more out of

your Salesforce

CRM

SideDrawer has a native Salesforce integration which allows you to view client documents natively within the Salesforce app.

Integrate your

tech stack

Want to streamline your workflows further? Use our Zapier connection (coming in Q3) to integrate securely with your other applications!

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