Advisory Clients Take Every RMD on Time Without a December Fire Drill
What it takes off your plate
The AgentWorks RMD Agent takes the fall fire drill off your operations associate and your advisors. It tracks every household's required minimum distribution against custodian activity all year, reaches out to clients about their elections and QCD requests well before the deadline, and assembles the tax packages CPAs ask for, so your team stays with the clients in front of them.
Ask any operations lead how RMD season runs now. Somewhere in the fall, a spreadsheet comes out. Someone checks each account at the custodian to see who has taken what. Clients who wanted a qualified charitable distribution call in with a charity name and no account details. Clients who prefer a single December distribution have not confirmed. Every week closer to the deadline, the list gets longer and the phones get busier.
The cost is real. A missed distribution carries an IRS penalty and a very uncomfortable conversation. Even when every distribution is taken, the fire drill takes the operations team and the advisors away from clients at the busiest part of the year.
What the RMD Agent does, step by step
The RMD Agent starts with the communication, because most RMD problems begin with a client who was never asked.
- Identifies who owes. It reads each household's retirement accounts from the CRM and the custodian and marks every account with a required distribution for the year, including inherited accounts.
- Asks early. Well ahead of the fall, it emails or texts each client to confirm how they want their distribution: monthly, quarterly, one amount in a chosen month, or partly as a QCD to a named charity.
- Chases the answer. When a client does not reply, it follows up by text and email, and flags the household for a call from the advisor before the timing gets close.
- Prepares the paperwork. It prepares the distribution request or QCD form with the account details and the client's instructions, and sends it for signature.
- Reconciles all year. It checks custodian distributions against each household's requirement and marks each account as satisfied, in progress or still owed.
- Escalates the gap. As December approaches, it lists every account still short and alerts the advisor and operations lead with the remaining steps.
- Builds the tax package. When tax season opens, it gathers the 1099-R forms, QCD confirmations and distribution records each CPA asks for and sends them on request.
It works in the systems your firm already runs: Redtail or Wealthbox for the household, the custodian for distribution data, and email, SMS and phone for the client conversation.
Where the work is recorded
A spreadsheet on one person's desktop is a single point of failure. The RMD Agent writes its work where the team already looks.
On each household record in the CRM, the operations team sees each account's requirement status, the client's election, every message and reply, the forms sent and signed, and each custodian distribution matched against the requirement. QCD requests sit with the charity name and confirmation attached.
What a person sees the next morning is one RMD view across the book: satisfied, in progress, waiting on the client, waiting on a signature, and still owed. When a CPA calls in the spring, the tax package is already on the record, ready to send. The same status also shows in the household's review brief, covered in the client review workflow for wealth managers and client review automation with CRM.
What your people do instead
Your advisors spend the fall talking with clients about what the distribution means for their plan, their giving and their taxes, instead of reading a list of who is behind. Your operations associate handles the client with a real problem, such as a changed beneficiary on an inherited account, instead of logging into the custodian account by account.
That is the division of work. The RMD Agent carries the tracking, the outreach, the chase, the paperwork, the reconciliation and the tax package. Your people carry the conversation and the judgment. Client satisfaction in tax season comes from a firm that already had it handled, and the RMD Agent makes that the normal state.
One next step
Take the free Financial Services Industry Assessment to see which workflow an agent should take first in your practice. Then visit the Financial Services industry page to see where the AgentWorks RMD Agent fits alongside the rest of your team.
See where the RMD 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.
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