New Households Get Funded Sooner When Every Form Is Chased
What it takes off your plate
The New Client Onboarding Agent is what keeps a new household moving from signed agreement to funded account. The AgentWorks New Client Onboarding Agent guides every new client through their forms, collects the documents and tracks each step, so your client service associate spends the week with clients instead of in a paperwork relay.
Here is how onboarding usually goes. The household says yes in the meeting. Then come the account applications, the risk questionnaire, the beneficiary forms, the transfer paperwork for the old brokerage account and the rollover from a former employer's plan. Each goes out by email. Some come back signed, some come back missing a page, and some sit in the client's inbox. The advisor asks the associate what is still outstanding, the associate checks three places, and nobody is sure until a transfer is rejected because a signature did not match.
The cost lands on the relationship. A new client who has to be asked twice for the same form, or who hears nothing for a week, starts to wonder whether they chose the right firm.
What the New Client Onboarding Agent does, step by step
The New Client Onboarding Agent starts with the communication a new client needs, then does the tracking behind it.
- Welcomes the household and lays out the steps. Right after the agreement is signed, it emails the client a plain list of what is coming, what they will need to gather and who to call with questions.
- Sends each form for signature. It prepares the account applications, risk questionnaire and beneficiary forms from the details already on file and sends them through DocuSign.
- Chases what is missing. When a form is not signed, or a statement for an account being transferred has not arrived, it follows up by email and text on a steady schedule and hands the household to your associate for a call if it stays stuck.
- Answers routine questions. When a client asks what a form is for or where to find an account number, it answers from your firm's approved guidance and passes anything about advice to the advisor.
- Checks each document. It confirms signatures, dates and account numbers are present before submission, so a transfer is not rejected for a missing page.
- Tracks transfers to funded. It watches each transfer and contribution at the custodian and tells the client when their money has arrived.
- Keeps the advisor informed. It sends the advisor a short status for every new household: what is done, what is outstanding and what is holding it up.
The New Client Onboarding Agent does not complete a risk questionnaire for a client or suggest an answer. The client completes it, and the advisor reviews the result under your firm's procedures.
Where the work is recorded
An agent that cannot record its results is a chatbot. Every email, text, form sent and form returned is logged on the household record in the CRM your team already uses, such as Redtail or Wealthbox, with an onboarding checklist that shows each step and its status. Your associate can pick up exactly where the agent left off.
The signed documents are saved to the household's file, and the account and transfer status is updated as the custodian confirms each step.
So the next morning your advisor opens one list and sees every household in onboarding: who signed yesterday, which transfers are in process, which are waiting on the client and which need a phone call from a person.
When those clients later call with questions, other agents can take the first pass, as with the Client Inquiry Agent that handles service requests while you meet clients.
What your people do instead
Your client service associate stays with the people in front of them. Instead of chasing signatures, they call the new household to welcome them personally, walk an older client through a beneficiary question and help the client who walked in for a distribution.
Your advisor spends the first weeks of a new relationship on the plan, not on asking whether the paperwork came back. The first review is booked with the money already in place.
The agent keeps the forms, the reminders and the status updates moving. Your people keep the relationship that brought the household in. Onboarding done this way also sets up the work that follows, like taking every RMD on time and thanking every CPA who referred the client.
One next step
Not sure onboarding is the first workflow to hand over? The free Financial Advisor Industry Assessment shows which workflow an agent should take first in your firm. To see the AgentWorks New Client Onboarding Agent alongside the rest of the advisory team, visit the Financial Advisor industry page.
See where the New Client Onboarding Agent would start in your financial services business.
I'm Harris, the Financial Services ambassador here. The free Industry Assessment reads your website and asks how calls, follow-ups and records happen today, then shows the first workflow worth handing to an agent like this one — and what your team gets back. Leave your email and I'll send the link.
Harris replies from financial-advisor@agentworksstudio.com. One email with the link — no list, no drip, unless you ask for the weekly letter. Or go straight there →