“Our decision to go paperless was driven not by cost or budget issues, but by the desire to grow our business, tame a paper monster that was consuming every available square foot of office space, improve our customer service, and keep up with a rapidly-changing financial planning industry,” says Blake Woodard, Managing Partner of Woodard Insurance, LLP, a Fort Worth-based firm of financial advisors and insurance professionals.

“In our view, we had no choice as to whether to go paperless. You must go paperless if you want to survive and thrive in the financial planning industry,” he adds. Full story »

“Personally, I think that every financial advisor has to move eventually to an electronic filing system. It’s not a matter of if, but when,” says Nick Cosentino, president and founder of Financial Foundations, Inc. “In my opinion, it would be impossible to succeed without it.”

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“If financial advisors aren’t talking to people, they’re not making money,” says Paul Murphy, National Sales Director at Spire Investment Partners, LLC. Murphy’s problem was that his top earners were spending too much time staying on top of the paperwork that comes with handling over $1 billion in client assets, which he expects to at least double this year. “It’s the regulators. It’s the auditors. The paper starts to pile up from the first client meeting and all the way through the process,” he says.

For Murphy, his previous experience integrating two large broker-dealers had shown how the right technology ultimately leads to success. “If you want to succeed in this business, you’ve got to get great technology,” he says. “Using technology not only defensively, but offensively, is very near and dear to my heart.”
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The Challenge

The strict oversight of the Isle of Man Government’s Financial Supervision Commission (FSC) means that independent financial advisers require a secure, enterprise-wide platform for tracking and managing both paper and electronic records. Proliferating work process documents, extensive audits and strict records-retention rules leave many financial services firms struggling to maintain productivity in a highly-competitive industry.

For Jon McGowan, managing director of MAC Financial, these challenges multiplied with his business’s increasing success. With three major acquisitions in three years, McGowan and his staff were dealing with more customers, more work and significantly more paper. They needed a solution that would not only organize their records, but would also assist them in following compliance directives. Whatever solution they chose had to have enterprise capabilities, be able to manage a large volume of documents and integrate with their customer relationship management (CRM) system to enable fast, efficient and flexible client service.

It took less than half a day for MAC Financial to implement a Laserfiche solution, enabling instant document retrieval and freeing up an entire floor of office space. Now, MAC Financial runs more efficiently, saving time, money and staff resources while increasing revenue.
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“We were an early adopter of many technologies, but not document management,” admits Alan Levitz, President and CEO of GCG Financial, Inc. “It was hard for me to envision it working effectively, because I was concerned about flexibility and searchability.”

Levitz’s father, Robert, founded GCG Financial, then called the Greater Chicago Group, Inc. in 1975. Alan joined in 1983, and his brothers David and Rick soon followed. Alan’s now president and CEO; David and Rick are both executive vice presidents. But GCG is hardly a small family operation—the firm manages 83 producers who sell insurance, investment and benefits, most of them split between Bannockburn, and Oakbrook IL, and Denver, CO. “As our offices don’t share the same physical location, it was important to standardize the services we provide to both groups,” says Levitz.
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Many financial advisors consider technology an expense, no matter how necessary. Joseph Salpietro of Xpyria Investment Advisors felt the same way, until he came to a crucial realization.

“We always figured we’d have to hire more people to create the efficiency we needed,” he says. “We’d talked about needing two or three administrators over the next five or so years at a cost of, say, $30,000-40,000 each. And when we found out that we didn’t have to hire those people to help us with the paper chase—well, that’s a smart business decision.”

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With the strict oversight of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), independent financial advisers in the UK require a robust platform for tracking and managing paper records. Rigorous audits and record-retention rules, along with numerous work-process documents, leave independent financial advisors drowning in a sea of paper.

Regal Independent Financial Services Director Neil James and his co-directors were fighting a losing battle against rapidly-filling file cabinets and spiraling storage costs, all the while facing the strict compliance and retention pressures of operating in a highly-regulated environment. With files of up to 250 pages, easy searching was a priority, and physical storage space was at a premium.
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Think of the paperwork challenges of a typical registered investment advisory (RIA) firm—new account forms, quarterly and annual statements, client agreements, and floods of general correspondence, all of which must be maintained in compliance with a host of regulations. Now imagine an RIA that’s also registered with a broker-dealer. And that offers retirement planning. And, for good measure, that sells insurance. Finally, picture this company’s paperwork spread out across 13 regional offices in two states.

Have a headache yet? If not, you probably at least have some sympathy for Rehmann Financial. With 60 associates located throughout Michigan and Florida, the rapidly growing wealth management firm faced a formidable information management challenge. But with Laserfiche document and business process management at the heart of its technology platform, Rehmann Financial has standardized business processes, enabled effortless information exchange and, within just a few months, achieved significant cost savings over their former paper-based business model.
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For many businesses, the vision of a paperless office is often the driving force behind implementing digital document management. For Professional Planning Service of New Hampshire (PPS), going paperless while maintaining the separation between two distinct business interests was giving staff double vision. But by implementing a Laserfiche document management system, PPS has avoided mixing their two business’ documents during their transition to a paperless environment—and improved efficiency and service quality along the way. Full story »

When it comes to their firm’s infrastructure, many financial advisors rely on the same paper files they’ve been using since they joined the industry. For some advisors, letting go of their paper is an unfathomable hurdle.

But other advisors—and their firms—recognize the benefits of document management. From immediately eliminating clutter to long-term benefits such as saving time, space and money, the return on investment with document management is quite impressive.

Stage 2 Planning Partners is one of those innovative firms achieving their goals thanks to document management. Founded by Principal Josh Patrick in 1997, the firm offers wealth management services for owners of closely held businesses, individuals and groups, focusing on a variety of strategic and financial issues.
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For financial advisors at Bond and Devick Financial Network, over twenty years of industry experience had given them a heightened awareness of the problems of a paper-based filing system. File cabinets took up almost 50 square feet of office space, and staff wasted time and money making multiple copies of the same document so advisors could have simultaneous access to information.

“We were dealing with an enormous amount of paper,” remembers Teresa Devick. “And the paper files concerned us greatly, mainly because if our office were ever damaged, our information would be completely unrecoverable.”

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Laserfiche became a hot topic at the home offices of NFP Securities in Austin, TX, a major national broker/dealer, when its compliance officer returned from a visit to Bingham and Hensley of Kingsport, TN, one of its 300 member firms.
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Bingham and Hensley, Inc., a certified financial planning organization in Kingsport, TN, had serious problems with its existing document management system and needed a solution.

“We are in our files on a daily basis, and there was no way to easily see the individual files for any given client, and no way to easily separate non-qualified and qualified life insurance files, as dictated by regulations,” says Jeff Bingham. “We were and are solely dedicated to going paperless, but our system was not living up to expectations and was not giving us the solution that we needed.”
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Principal Mark Berger

Advisors at Berger Financial Group, Inc., (BFG) have always taken pride in providing sound advice and stellar client service, but when it came to their filing system, they knew that improvement was crucial.

“We had file cabinets that were using up valuable space,” says Principal Mark Berger, “not to mention the substantial administrative time required to keep each physical file up-to-date. We knew we needed to improve our filing to improve our efficiency.”

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Transamerica Financial Advisors, Inc. (TFA), an indirect subsidiary of AEGON N.V., provides investments and financial planning to clients nationwide. With a network of more than 700 registered representatives, 42 offices of supervisory jurisdiction (OSJ) branches and 51 home office staff, TFA is a rapidly growing enterprise whose independent representatives faced the growing cost of paper-based processes: misplaced documents, time-consuming manual workflows, express-mail costs and file storage expenses.
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