What's New: Digital Client Onboarding

In the coming weeks, you will be prompted to install the latest version of Schwab Data Delivery. The new enhancement offers a number of benefits, including the ability to schedule tasks instead of manually starting them. In addition, the data viewers now display Schwab's enhanced core file formats, and we have also refreshed the look and feel of Schwab Data Delivery as a whole.

You will be prompted to install the upgrade in the coming weeks. The download will be automatic, but to install it and activate the new functionality, you must either have administrator privileges on your computer or ask your firm's security administrator or other IT professional to grant permission and install the upgrade.

May 2023 (0523-3R4H)

We have enhanced both the digital onboarding and account maintenance mutual fund transfer of assets (TOA) workflows. Now when you initiate a TOA with either tool, your clients will be able to securely eAuthorize the transaction with a few clicks or taps on their desktop or mobile device.

Previously, TOAs for mutual funds were not available with digital onboarding and required a printed form with a wet signature within the account maintenance digital workflow. With this enhancement, nearly 90% of all transactions that advisors initiate for their clients are compatible with Schwab's fastest, most secure approval option.

We encourage you to take advantage of this feature to give your clients a better TOA experience whenever such transfers are required.

April 2023 (0423-3V78)

We are in the process of adding a new dashboard feature to serve as your "front page" for Schwab Advisor Center. Just like the front page of a newspaper, the new dashboard lets you see at-a-glance the most important information you need to start your day. You may already see the new feature as the first tab at the top of Schwab Advisor Center. If not, we will be rolling out this feature to your firm in the coming weeks.

The dashboard features a series of modules, each of which provides easy-to-read data regarding an important aspect of your clients' accounts:

• All bulletins posted in the past 14 days
• Events and webcasts happening over the next two weeks
• Your firm's alerts by category, along with links to details
• The number of high-level status updates and requests for your firm, along with links to details
• Firm- and master-level assets under management
• For firm security administrators, firm-level components-of-change calculations and a balance-over-time chart

Best of all, you can customize and arrange these modules to suit your needs.

More content modules are coming soon:

• Firm-level asset flow calculations, lists of clients generating the largest inflows and outflows, and the net asset flow over time
• Current market index information for U.S., European, and Asian markets
• At-a-glance lists of the top 10 highest-value accounts and security holdings

We encourage you to visit the dashboard today—and to make it part of your everyday Schwab Advisor Center routine.

February 2023 (0223-34F3)

We know that you rely on the Service Guide for in-depth information about the Schwab policies and functionality you interact with every day. We have refreshed this tool to look and work more like our other digital experiences—yet all the same resources are still available. We hope this enhancement makes it even easier for you to find the information you need.

Functionally, very little has changed. Service requests, bookmarks, and Help—all work the same way as before; you'll just notice a few tweaks:

• The new homepage has easier access to popular topics and key resources, with the search bar prominently featured at the top of the page 
• Navigation has been consolidated at the top of the page and features more concise labels
• Some topics have been rearranged to give you an at-a-glance understanding of more important subtopics

We hope you enjoy the modernized experience when using the Service Guide.

February 2023 (0223-34F3)

We are continuously looking for ways to bring you better digital tools to help you run a more efficient business, provide a better client experience, and minimize fraud. Here's a quick overview of the top tech enhancements we made to the Schwab platform in 2022.

1. Digital client onboarding. Expanded our digital client onboarding workflow with the ability to open, set up, and fund multiple accounts for a household in one streamlined workflow.
    
2. New digital account management workflows. Added four completely digital workflows that allow your clients to quickly and securely approve common account maintenance tasks such as transferring assets or adding a beneficiary.
    
3. Move money. Launched import transactions, giving you the ability to submit multiple onetime cash journal transactions quickly and securely by uploading a comma-separated values (CSV) spreadsheet file.
    
4. Schwab Advisor Center mobile app. Added new check deposit functionality in the Schwab Advisor Center mobile app to photograph and deposit checks of up to $3 million into your clients' retirement and brokerage accounts.
    
5. Status and Alerts overview page. Launched the Status and Alerts overview page, providing you with a consolidated view of all recent status updates and alerts and enabling you to take action on those notifications from a single page. We also added the ability to make the overview page your default homepage when you log in to Schwab Advisor Center.  

For more information about the coming enhancements to Schwab's technology ecosystem, review the Schwab Advisor Center digital roadmap and register for the 2023 Tech Talk webcast series.

January 2023 (0123-2523)

We are pleased to introduce the fourth digital account maintenance workflow, which enables you to help clients add authorized agents―such as a spouse or relative―to accounts that are managed by your firm. 

This new workflow joins our existing Schwab MoneyLink®, beneficiary designation, and asset transfer workflows. We have also produced a new step-by-step guide; we recommend that you bookmark it now, as we will update it as new workflows become available.

This all-digital process is similar to the digital onboarding experience and offers comparable benefits:

• Save time and reduce errors using a guided workflow that auto-fills and validates client information from Schwab. 
• You can enter key client information, or, if you don't have it, your client can enter it during the approval process, so you don't have to spend time chasing down details.
• The workflow features detailed status tracking and the ability to recall, edit, and resend digital envelopes.

This digital workflow is designed to help you complete approvals for two new roles, which avoid the need for notary approvals, which is required with the previous Limited Power of Attorney/Financial Power of Attorney (LPOA/FPOA) roles: 

• The new Limited Trading Authorization grants trading permission.
• The new Full Trading Authorization grants trading and move money permissions.

These new roles apply only to individual third parties. No changes have been made to RIA or sub-advisor authorizations or roles. Any individual authorizations your client has already set up using LPOA/FPOA will stay the same. POA forms will be retired, however, and all new enrollments will use the newly defined roles and form. 

Note that clients must have Schwab Alliance credentials to access the digital envelope for eAuthorization. For clients without access, you can print a prefilled PDF form to send them for a wet signature.

We will be adding more account maintenance workflows over the coming months to deliver a similar secure, efficient, all-digital experience for other routine tasks.

December 2022 (1222-2HJP)

Now you can use new functionality to easily navigate to important pages and create easy-to-remember nicknames for your master and sub-accounts.

When you select a master or sub-account on the Profiles page, you can now click Action on the right side of the screen to access a menu allowing you to trade, move money, manage the account, and do portfolio analysis—all without navigating through other pages of the site.

One of the links on the Action menu allows you to create custom nicknames for your master and sub-accounts, making them easier to remember and look up. Your firm's security administrator controls which users have access to add or modify a nickname for each account. 
 
We hope that these and future such quality-of-life improvements will make using Schwab Advisor Center to conduct business on behalf of your clients and firm even better.

November 2022 (1122-20T1)

Recently, we launched a completely new DocuSign^® experience on Schwab Advisor Center.

If you have used DocuSign on other platforms, you will find the new workflow to be similar to those. You now have full access to the DocuSign console, as well as to 80+ templated Schwab forms that prefill and pretag based on Schwab data.

We have created an interactive guide that walks you through the process for both you and your clients. We invite you to attend one of our upcoming webcasts to learn more about the new changes. 

In addition, below you'll find some of the most important things to keep in mind before you get started.

1. Before you use the new workflow, you must create new DocuSign credentials, even if you have existing Schwab DocuSign credentials or credentials for other instances of DocuSign outside of Schwab Advisor Center.
2. There are now two options for creating digital envelopes with DocuSign on Schwab Advisor Center: 
   • Through the Schwab Advisor Center workflow, which leverages 80+ templated Schwab forms that prefill and pretag data
   • By completing PDF forms yourself and creating the digital envelope directly from the DocuSign console
3. Your client will be asked to verify their identity before approving the documents. You have two choices for authentication:
   • They can verify their identity via text-based SMS message with a code they must input to proceed.
   • You can opt to have them pass a knowledge-based authentication method where they are asked to answer three questions about themselves, in addition to the SMS verification outlined above.

While Schwab's digital onboarding tools are still the best, fastest, and most secure way to open accounts at Schwab, we hope those who rely on DocuSign for their firm's workflows will enjoy the new, feature-rich experience.

October 2022 (1022-2DCM)

We are pleased to introduce the third digital account maintenance workflow, which allows you to initiate a new request to transfer assets from outside accounts, then send the request to your client for digital approval in seconds via their desktop or mobile device.

This new workflow joins our existing Schwab MoneyLink^® and beneficiary designation workflows. We have also produced a new step-by-step guide to both; we recommend that you bookmark it now, as we will update the guide as new workflows become available.

This all-digital process is similar to the digital onboarding experience and offers comparable benefits:

• Save time and reduce errors using a guided workflow that auto-fills and validates client information from Schwab. 
• You can enter key information, or, if you don't have it, your client can enter the data during the approval process, so you don't have to spend time chasing down details.
• The workflow features detailed status tracking and the ability to recall, edit, and resend digital envelopes.

Note that clients must have Schwab Alliance credentials to access the digital envelope for eAuthorization. For clients without access, you can print a prefilled PDF file to send them for a wet signature.

We will be adding more account maintenance workflows over the coming months to deliver a similar secure, efficient, all-digital experience for other routine tasks.

October 2022 (1022-2DCM)

A digital account maintenance workflow will be available soon! It will allow you to initiate a new request to designate beneficiaries for applicable accounts, then send the request to your client for digital approval in seconds via their desktop or mobile device.

This new workflow is an addition to our existing Schwab MoneyLink^® account maintenance workflow. Bookmark the new step-by-step guide for both. We'll update the guide as new workflows become available. 

This all-digital process is similar to the digital onboarding experience and offers comparable benefits:

• Save time and reduce errors, using a guided workflow that auto-fills and validates client information from Schwab 
• You can enter key information or, if you don't have it, your client can enter it during the approval process, so you don't have to spend time chasing down details
• Features detailed status tracking and the ability to recall, edit, and resend digital envelopes

Note that clients must have Schwab Alliance credentials to access the digital envelope for eAuthorization. For a client without access, you can print a prefilled PDF file to send to them for a wet signature.

We will be adding more account maintenance workflows in the coming months to deliver a similar secure, efficient, all-digital experience for other routine tasks.

September 2022 (0922-24YE)

We have a new digital workflow that allows you to initiate Schwab MoneyLink transactions and send them to your clients to approve in seconds via their desktops or mobile devices.

This streamlined process is similar to the digital onboarding experience and offers comparable benefits:

• Save time and reduce errors using a guided workflow that auto-fills and validates client information from Schwab 
• If you have the external bank information, you can enter it. If not, your client can enter it during the approval process, so you don't have to spend time chasing down details
• Features detailed status tracking and the ability to recall, edit, and resend digital envelopes

Note that clients must have Schwab Alliance credentials to access the digital envelope for eAuthorization. For clients without access, you can print a prefilled PDF file to send them for a wet signature.

We will be adding new account maintenance workflows over the coming months, to deliver a similar secure, efficient, all-digital experience for other routine tasks.

August 2022 (0822-2ZA7)

The digital client onboarding feature you asked for is here: open multiple accounts for a household with a single, secure digital envelope. We know that the onboarding process can be complex, but you can streamline it with this latest digital onboarding update. The workflow is the fastest, most secure method for opening accounts at Schwab, allowing you to open multiple accounts for your clients and send each signer one email to approve all accounts. 

You and your clients can navigate the account open process in minutes—all while the workflow validates your input data, significantly reducing errors and delays. With digital onboarding, you're giving your clients a simpler, more streamlined review and approval experience that gets the information right the first time. 

Here's what you can do with digital onboarding:

• Open one or more accounts, tailor them to your client's needs, and easily fund them using options like Schwab MoneyLink or ACAT asset transfers—all in a single workflow—with one email from you to your client
• Save time and reduce errors using a guided workflow that auto-fills and validates client information from Schwab and leading third-party platforms
• Let clients add and edit their own information and documents that you don't have on hand, so you don't have to spend time chasing down details

Other features include: 

• Support for the most common accounts (including Schwab One®, living trusts, inherited IRAs for individuals, and custodial accounts) and for 16 of the most common advisor documents 
• Detailed status tracking and the ability to recall, edit, and resend envelopes
• Integrated enrollment in Schwab's advisor client portal, Schwab Alliance, enabling your clients to digitally approve requests and paving a path to a paper-free future 

You can walk through your experience (and your clients') with this step-by-step guide. If you would like to see a live demo and ask questions, register for one of the weekly webcasts hosted by our experts. 

July 2022 (0722-2BEM)

A new enhancement is coming to the digital onboarding workflow that lets you upload and save your firm's frequently used documents (client welcome letter, advisory agreement, and the like) as defaults to be automatically applied to future digital envelopes.

From the Manage Schwab Envelopes link on the Forms and Applications page, click the new Saved Firm Documents link. Choose the master account, then upload the documents and save. Going forward those documents will be automatically added to all future digital client onboarding envelopes created for that master account. The documents can be edited within each individual envelope, if needed.

You can save up to 16 types of popular documents, including:

• Advisory agreement
• Form CRS
• Consent to invest
• Risk tolerance questionnaire

When you send a digital envelope to your clients, they may be asked to electronically sign or acknowledge receipt of certain documents such as regulatory disclosures. For others no signature or acknowledgment is required; your client can simply download, review, and keep the documents for their records.

This timesaving feature will be available to any firm that has access to the digital onboarding workflow and the required master account.

Look for further enhancements to the digital onboarding experience throughout the year, including the ability to easily view edits made by clients and to initiate the account open process for multiple accounts within a single digital envelope.

May 2022 (0522-2HNP)

We've been working to expand our digital onboarding capabilities, and now you can take advantage of the most significant number of advancements yet that provide you with the fastest and most secure way to onboard new and existing clients. 

The new workflow builds on our existing digital account open tool and delivers a streamlined account open, funding, and setup process for you and clients, supporting the most common account types and onboarding tasks.

This major expansion is a time-saver for your team, minimizing errors and delays by guiding you and your clients through the data capture process and delivering a much simpler, more interactive experience in minutes.  

Key digital onboarding features:

• Expanded support for account types such as living trusts, inherited IRAs for individuals, and custodial accounts, in addition to the most common Schwab One® and IRA account types supported previously
• Account setup and funding integration, including ACAT asset transfer (TOA) and Schwab MoneyLink® setup, in a single digital envelope
• Flexible workflow that enables clients to add and edit required information, including uploading documents when needed
• Support for 16 of the most common advisor documents in addition to Schwab forms
• A guided process that auto-fills client information from Schwab and leading third-party platforms with Schwab integration 
• Detailed status tracking and the ability to recall, edit, and resend envelopes
• Automatic enrollment in Schwab Alliance, putting your clients on a path to a paper-free future 

This step-by-step guide  walks you through the experience for both you and your clients. If you would like to see a live demo and ask questions, register for one of the weekly webcasts hosted by our experts.  

August 2021 (0821-1YN7)