description on how to select a document and file management solution for financial advisors

1. Selecting a cost effective, compliant Document & File management solution for financial advisors,
agents and brokers ?
As I meet with financial specialist clients, whether a one person operation or a large professional
practice, a common theme has emerged about the time wasted handling, processing & searching for
documents. Both the professionals and the back office team lose productive time with these non-
productive activities. We have quantified and costed these activities as an additional 15%-20% on
your operational costs.
Searching to find the correct documents one of the team needs, which may be related to a client
query or a need to reference during a client meeting out of the office, or perhaps to confirm
compliance or provide a supplier with some important policy or client information, is a well
understood example the industry can relate to.
Documentation is very important for your business, for your client and for 3rd parties such as
regulators and therefore is central to your business success. So what is needed is a software solution
that ensures for both professionals and back office staff that Information and documents are
correctly available when required, and the time spent on the actual content of the document as it
relates to the stakeholder is where your focus is, and that any handling or storage is automated in a
secure manner.
The challenge is often the same in a practice which uses software as well as those who are still
largely paper based. Analysis suggests the problems are fundamentally the same.
 One back office person handles all processing and filing, and is the focal point for requests
for information and documentation, that person can be a bottleneck in the process, always
has to do the storage and retrieval and may have a system not understood by the rest of the
professionals in the practice.
 Two or more back office staff handle the processing and both though competent do things
slightly differently.
 It’s a “free for all” and everyone in the practice has access for storage and retrieval and
things go missing, get misfiled and sometimes lost.
We all understand the challenge when a business is paper intensive and regulated. What is
surprising for some is that having moved part or all of their process to the digital world that the
expected benefits for doing this are not realised.

2. There are three digital scenarios that are most common within the financial specialist community,
and only one of these scenarios can be considered effective in delivering real business benefits and
bottom line results. Let us consider each scenario:-
1. Electronic Filing on our Server/PC’s: This is probably the most common scenario where some
or all of the team create, update, scan and store documents using the operating systems file
management tools, such as Microsoft Windows or MAC OS. Though there can be some
benefit in flexibility to change and update documents, all of the above issues that were
experienced in the paper world, just transfer to the digital world. Even if we just focus on
back office person managing the records, they have to create the files and folders, come up
with naming conventions, take decisions daily what folder and file to store a document in
and the Filing system may not be readily accessible to everyone, or worse still everyone does
their own thing.
2. Document & File/Record Management Systems: There are many systems available from the
sophisticated, expensive enterprise systems to low cost or even free open source document
management systems. These are not inherently bad systems and when set up and operated
correctly they provide great quality and productivity gains. However because they are
generic in that they have application in many types of businesses they have to be
configured, have work flows set up, choices have to be made on types and handling of
different document types. Search features will tend to be mainly key word so there is still a
fair amount of wading through search results to find the right document.
3. Document & File Management for Specialists:- We believe based on our experience that the
best results and biggest payback, for financial specialists who want to move to, or derive the
full benefits of the digital world and go totally paperless, is to use a system such as
Brokerprove which is designed specifically for advisors, agents & brokers. It has a completely
pre-configured file structure and document types that are unique to your business. It
handles the structure and naming of files electronically and as a result, it’s harder to make
mistakes, because the filing process and system is very well defined, there is only one
process and one filing system that everyone uses. Searching for documents is more refined
and faster and can be completed by any of the team once they have an internet connection.
Nothing can get lost even if there is an unplanned system outage as a copy of every file and
folder is securely stored in the cloud.
In conclusion:- If we had a totally paper based business with all the legacy issues and costs that exist
and we were to fix this system, what would we have to do.
 Define in great detail the process for receiving, handling and storing any type of document
we need in the business.
 Document the process and system and then train and retrain every staff member.
 Have strict , enforced rules for checking in and out documents
 Always anticipate the specific documents needed during the day so that you have them with
you when you need them and have a process to let everyone know what documents you
have.
 Monitor and audit the process very regularly to ensure compliance, keep a record of non-
compliances and corrective actions.

3. However what we are suggesting that when you move to the Digital world that all the above items
are addressed automatically, pragmatically and in a way that is user friendly, this is why we
recommend using a document and file management system that was designed specifically for your
financial advisory business. The system provides the guides, standards, process and rules for how
digital documents are managed, so it’s just becomes the way everyone does things giving more
consistence, higher productivity, better stakeholder services and enhanced compliance.
Procurement check-list for a Document & Record Management System:
 A file structure specific to a financial specialists business
 An automatic file naming system that is easy to understand and manually or automatically
search.
 A utility to quickly determine your record compliance status
 An un-disputable set of (e) evidence that can be independently verified by any stakeholder on
or off line as to the provenance, security and integrity of any document.
 A level of digital security that ensures only authorised personnel can access and review
specific documents.
 Simple secure access for any authorised individual via the internet anywhere, any time
 Confidence that there is always a secure, up-to-date back up copy of all files available.
Only Brokerprove meets all these criteria by design.
For further information
www.brokerprove.com
www.digiprove.com
info@brokerprove.com
declan@brokerprove.com