Client onboarding for financial services still runs on a familiar routine. A phone call to ask for an ID. Another to chase the proof of address. A scanned payslip that arrives as a blurry photo. An email chain that never quite ends. Multiply that by every new client, and a large part of the week goes to chasing paperwork instead of serving clients.
It doesn’t have to work that way. The same information, collected from the same client, can move through one WhatsApp thread and end with a signature.
Why onboarding is where the time goes
Most finance and professional-services firms don’t have an onboarding problem so much as a chasing problem. The information a client needs to give is rarely complicated. Getting it, in the right form, at the right time, from someone who is busy, is the hard part.
It also matters more than it used to. South Africa came off the FATF grey list in October 2025, and a new review cycle starts in late 2026. FICA, the National Credit Act and FSCA enforcement are tightening together, and the first thing a regulator or reviewer asks for is the onboarding record. A file that is incomplete, or can’t be found quickly, is a problem the moment someone asks for it.
What the new way looks like
The journey is the same whatever the firm does:
- A client messages on WhatsApp. An AI agent qualifies them and routes them to the right person or process.
- A form captures what’s needed the first time: an application, a FICA check, a needs analysis.
- If a document is missing, the same thread chases it until the pack is complete.
- Everything lands signed, verified and searchable in one place.
When something gets complicated, the agent hands over to a person, with the full conversation attached, so nobody starts from scratch.
It works in practice
Mukuru, a financial services provider across Africa, Europe and Asia, built its customer journey on WhatsApp using Infobip. WhatsApp Flows cut one process from 17 steps to two and halved the drop-off rate in Botswana. Its WhatsApp campaigns consistently achieve read rates above 92%.
On the signing side, KPC Private Funds, an alternative investments firm, replaced agreement packages built from dense PDFs with a web form feeding the right template, and a workflow handling ID verification, signing and review. Using Docusign IAM, it reports about 70% time saved on agreement processes and 87% fewer templates to manage.
The same journey, a different deadline
What changes from one firm to the next is what’s on the line.
A lender has seven business days to prove an affordability assessment was done properly. An accounting practice has 30 business days from a company’s anniversary date to file a beneficial ownership declaration. A broker needs a record of advice written at the time, not reconstructed afterwards. An executor has six months to account for an estate.
Each of those is a deadline that a slow, scattered onboarding process makes harder to meet. The mechanism that fixes it is the same.
Where to start
You don’t need to replace your systems. The journey sits on top of what you already use, and the best first step is usually the onboarding process that costs your team the most back-and-forth today.
If you’d like to see it running against your own process, book a walkthrough on our finance page: https://www.thinktanks.co.za/finance-professional-services
Sources:
- Mukuru customer story (Infobip): https://www.infobip.com/customer/mukuru
- KPC Private Funds customer story (Docusign): https://www.docusign.com/customer-stories/how-docusign-iam-helps-kpc-private-funds-simplify-complex-investment-agreements
