Increase Client Stickiness By Focusing On What You Should Do, Not What You Can Do

The wealth management landscape continues to change as newer generations inherit wealth or create their own. The demand for digitisation is also growing stronger for clients who expect convenience, speed, and transparency.

What can family offices, multi-family offices, and wealth management firms do to anticipate and exceed client expectations? Tate Henshaw, Co-Founder of Arc Business Management, speaks with Brandon Roth, Senior Product Marketing Manager of BILL about looking beyond what you can do to what you should do and how Arc has leveraged bill pay services to uplevel the client experience.

Brandon: Tate, tell us about your firm.

Tate: We’re a business management firm with clients who include actors, rappers, and college and professional athletes. They are mostly younger and trust us to help with everything from estate planning and bookkeeping to payroll and tour accounting. In a single day we may be shipping a client’s car across the nation, setting up utilities, and paying bills. We aim to provide the 3 Cs: comfort, control and confidence.

Brandon: What is a common wealth management technology trap to avoid?

Tate: Wealth management professions, including family offices and multi-family offices, are experiencing upheaval as we navigate the Great Wealth Transfer. Client expectations are evolving. They want more services for the same price. As a result, we often focus on what can be accomplished.

With new technology and access to information, there is little that falls outside of what we can do.

With new technology and access to information, there is little that falls outside of what we can do. However, we are all limited by a combination of time, resources, people and skills. It’s imperative that we understand what we should do to maximize achieving our goals. Otherwise, we can fall behind competition or let our core competency suffer.

Brandon: Can you give me an idea of what this looks like?

Tate: What we can do limits us. It may do so inadvertently, but it does. When you think of what you should do instead of what you can do, you have to prioritise. Then you can source technologies or partnerships to make it a reality.

“I used to have to pay bills. It was a headache. Now, I don’t have that pain.”

Bill pay is one example. No one likes paying bills, but it’s important. Bill pay is a foundational service for us. We don’t lead with it, but it increases our client stickiness. Our clients are traveling and focused on their careers and lives. When we pay bills for them, what they understand is “I used to have to pay bills. It was a headache. Now, I don’t have that pain.” Our bill pay service builds deeper relationships with our clients, which in turn makes them less likely to move their business.

Brandon: You mentioned automated AP from BILL and I want to get back to that. But first, can you share how bill pay looks without automation?

Tate: When we first offered bill pay eight years ago, we had a tedious process. I remember large stacks of check stock and tracking bills on spreadsheets. We had AP pain if a spreadsheet wasn’t updated or we worked off an old version. When you multiply that across the multiple entities we were managing, the process wasn’t efficient or transparent. It also meant we had a higher likelihood of double paying or data entry errors because it was so manual.

Brandon: How does BILL solve these headaches?

BILL provides a level of clarity into the AP process. It can pull bills into one, automated, cloud-based platform. Invoices are uploaded or emailed into the BILL system. It routes the bills through the proper approval process based on factors like vendor, client, and amount. We used to have to remember the workflows for clients. Now we can implement these policies into our process via software, which is infinitely more scalable. Every step is tracked and audit-ready, so you can easily see if a bill has been paid or where it is in the review process. focus on what you should be doing, and you’ll build even stronger relationships with your clients.

The workflow is agile, meaning if your client wants every bill over $5,000 reviewed by their manager, they will automatically be included and notified when a bill is ready for them. The steps are digitised, from reviewing to approving to paying to reconciling with accounting systems. Plus, it syncs with accounting systems. For my firm, it makes us much more efficient and increases our account managers’ capacity by more than 25%.

Brandon: What do your clients experience with BILL?

Tate: It’s not unusual now for firms to mail piles of invoices and checks to their clients for signatures. Then they stuff the returned checks into envelopes, drop them in the mail, and wait for them to clear. It’s a time-intensive process for everyone.

Brandon: What do you advise firms to do that might not have the resources to handle bill pay?

Tate: Why not consider alternative options such as outsourcing your client’s AP to a trusted partner such as Arc? We have extensive experience in running business management services including bill pay, which allows your firm to sell a full set of services including AP and differentiate your firm from competitors.

Brandon: Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Any final words of advice?

Tate: Don’t get bogged down thinking about all the things you can do. Instead, focus on what you should be doing, and you’ll build even stronger relationships with your clients.

Brandon: What’s the best way for someone to contact you?

Tate: You can reach me and my team at info@arcmgmt.co

With BILL we’re able to abolish this outdated process and make the bill pay process mobile. Instead of wading through stacks of paper, clients can open an app and review and approve bills in seconds. Plus, we’re able to tailor the level of participation to meet clients’ preferences.

For example, our music clients are often too busy to oversee the AP process. They have bills come directly to BILL. Using the BILL app or working online, they can see statuses, approvals, payments, invoices, and more - no matter where they are. We help them by managing cash flow and payment timelines. That is all taken care of for them. But if someone wants to be even more hands on, we can create workflows that help them accomplish this.

Brandon: I know the safety and security of your clients’ personal and financial information are top priority. How does BILL help with this?

Tate: With BILL, checks do not have client banking information on them. The payments are drawn from the BILL bank account. Masking that information gives us peace of mind, along with multi-factor authentication and the fact that vendors can input their own information. You can also limit who has the authority to approve payments. UHNW and HNW individuals are often a target for fraud, so these extra precautions are valuable.

The information provided in this document does not, and is not intended to constitute legal or financial advice and is for general informational purposes only. The content is provided “as-is”; no representations are made that the content is error free.

About BILL

BILL (NYSE: BILL) is a leader in financial automation software for small and midsize businesses (SMBs). We are dedicated to automating the future of finance so businesses can thrive. Hundreds of thousands of businesses trust BILL solutions to manage financial workflows, including payables, receivables, and spend and expense management.

To learn more about BILL and automating AP for your clients, visit: www.bill.com