The shared inbox full of passports
Open the firm's admin inbox and you will find it: photos of passports, P60s, pension statements, bank statements and signed forms, all as email attachments. Some clients send them to the adviser directly, some to the admin address, some copy in half the office. Each one has to be saved to the right client folder and renamed.
Going the other way, suitability reports and application forms go out as attachments too, sometimes password protected, with the password sent in a second email that the client cannot find.
Why email is still the default
Clients use what they know. If the firm has a portal but it needs a separate login, a password reset and a desktop computer, clients will give up and email. Staff, trying to be helpful, accept whatever arrives.
Many back office systems include a client portal, but firms often find adoption low, because it was switched on without anyone designing how clients actually receive and send documents day to day.
Firms also worry about putting clients off. Asking an older client to use a portal can feel like making them work harder, so staff quietly accept email instead. The result is two routes, used inconsistently, with the less secure one carrying most of the documents.
The cost of doing it by email
| Issue | Consequence |
|---|---|
| Sensitive documents sit in many inboxes | More places for data to leak or be sent to the wrong person |
| Attachments filed by hand | Staff time, and misfiled documents |
| Password protected PDFs | Clients locked out, more calls |
| Wrong recipient on a reply all | A data incident to investigate |
| No record of what was sent and read | Uncertainty when a client says they never got it |
The risk is the uncomfortable part. A misdirected email with a client's passport and pension details is a serious matter for any firm, and the more documents move by email, the more likely one goes astray.
The document exchange we build
- Clients receive a secure link, or use a portal with a passwordless sign-in, that works on a phone without installing anything.
- Upload requests are specific: "Your latest statement for the Aviva pension", not "please send documents".
- Uploaded files are scanned, categorised and filed to the right client and holding in your document store or back office automatically.
- Staff send reports and forms from the back office. The client receives a notification email with no attachment and opens the document securely.
- Each document shows when it was sent, opened and, where needed, signed through your e-signature tool.
- Where your back office has a portal already, we build around it and improve the client journey rather than replacing it.
- Incoming emails with attachments are still caught: the attachment is filed and the client is sent a gentle link for next time.
Day to day afterwards
The admin inbox stops being a document store. Files land in the right place with sensible names. Clients get documents on their phone without hunting for a password. And if someone asks whether a report was received, the answer is on the record, with a date.
Firms rarely get every client off email, and there is no need to force it. The aim is for the secure route to be the easy one, so most clients choose it.
Advisers benefit directly. Documents they need before a meeting are in the client record already, filed by holding, rather than sitting in a colleague's inbox under a subject line like "stuff you asked for".
Recognise your inbox?
- Clients email passports and statements as attachments.
- Staff save and rename attachments by hand every day.
- Reports go out as password protected PDFs.
- Your existing portal has few active clients.
- You cannot easily show when a document was received or opened.