A new client signs the engagement letter, relieved to have finally found a firm they trust. Then the emails start.
Identity documents, proof of address, a risk questionnaire, a request for last year’s accounts sent twice because the first one never arrived.
Three weeks in, nothing has actually started, and the client is starting to wonder if they made the right choice.
This is the part of the relationship most firms spend the least time designing and it is doing more work than most partners realise.
Onboarding is not a formality before the real work begins. For the client, it is the first real evidence of what working with the firm will actually be like.
Where trust is won or lost during client onboarding
Clients rarely judge a firm on technical skill in the first few weeks. They cannot until the onboarding process is completed.
What they judge is how organised the process feels, how often they hear from the firm and whether they are made to chase for updates or told what to expect up front.
This matters because first impressions carry weight beyond the onboarding period itself.
A client who spends the first month chasing paperwork is likely to expect the same pattern for the rest of the relationship, whether or not that turns out to be true.
What the data says
Evidence from various research studies suggests that most accountants haven’t reviewed their onboarding processes in more than a year and a half.
That is a long time for a client’s first experience of a firm to go unexamined. If you are reading this and thinking that seems like a long time, when was the last time you checked your own and what did you find out?
If you can’t answer, you must understand the impact of a poor experience for clients.
Moneypenny’s latest Accountancy Client Experience Report names poor responsiveness, inconsistent service and a lack of proactive communication as the main, preventable drivers of client churn.
Separately, ICAEW reported that one in five UK accounting firms fell short on AML compliance in 2025, most often down to outdated policies and incomplete checks rather than anything technically complex. Onboarding is usually where these gaps first appear.
None of these issues are really about technology. They are about whether the client can tell, from week one, that the firm has its process under control.
Where client onboarding usually breaks down
The pattern tends to look the same across firms of different sizes. Documents get requested over email and chased manually.
The client cannot see what is still outstanding, so they either wait or ask. AML and KYC checks sit apart from the rest of the process, treated as a separate hurdle rather than a built-in step.
Because none of this is visible in one place to practice leaders, small delays compound into a slow, disjointed start.
None of this reflects the quality of the firm’s actual work. It reflects the quality of the process wrapped around it, which is usually fixable.
Compliance and experience are not competing goals
It is tempting to treat AML, KYC and risk assessment as the main reason onboarding feels slow, but the checks themselves are not the problem.
The Money Laundering Regulations 2017 require identity verification, customer due diligence, risk assessment and proper record keeping for every new client and that will not change – it may even be more closely monitored when the FCA takes over as the regulator for the accountancy industry.
What does change is how visible and structured that process is to the client.
A firm that asks for one document at a time over separate emails will feel slower and less organised than one that requests everything up front, tracks what has been received and tells the client exactly what is left.
The regulatory requirement is identical. The experience is not.
What this looks like in practice
Good onboarding gives the client one place to send documents, provides partners and other practice leaders with one clear view of what is outstanding, which creates a firm that looks organised from the first interaction, not just efficient once the work begins.
This is exactly what Onboarder is built for. It brings secure document collection, client due diligence, risk assessment and AML Check into a single onboarding flow, so clients get a clear, guided start and firms get a process that holds up to scrutiny.
If onboarding has been costing you clients before the real work even starts, it is worth seeing what a properly designed process looks like.