How Accountants Can Digitise Their Client Onboarding
How Accountants Can Digitise Their Client Onboarding
As an accountant, you know that onboarding new clients is a time-consuming process. Identification, KYC documentation, risk assessment, and signing the engagement letter – everything needs to be in place before work can begin. But what if you could reduce the process from days to minutes?
Why Digitisation Makes Sense for Accountants
Accountants are subject to anti-money laundering requirements and must be able to document client due diligence during inspections by the Danish Business Authority. This means every single client requires thorough identification and ongoing updates of information.
Traditionally, this involves paper-based processes: copying driving licences, printing documents for signature, physical archiving, and manual follow-up. It takes time, creates risk of errors, and makes it difficult to track when documentation was last updated.
Digital onboarding consolidates the entire process in one place and automates the most time-consuming elements. This frees up time for the work that truly creates value for your clients.
The Four Steps of Digital Onboarding
1. Digital Identification With MitID signing, the client's identity is verified automatically. You no longer need to request copies of ID documents and can be confident that identification meets legal requirements. Time and verification method are logged automatically.
2. Automated KYC Collection Send a digital questionnaire to the client where they provide information about beneficial owners, business activities, and other relevant details. Responses are collected automatically and form the basis for your risk assessment.
3. Digital Signature on the Engagement Letter Once identification and KYC are complete, the client can sign the engagement letter digitally with MitID. A secure digital signature that is legally binding and easy to archive.
4. Centralised Documentation All documents, identification details, and timestamps are gathered in one place. During inspections, you can present complete documentation with just a few clicks – an audit trail showing exactly when and how each check was performed.
The Savings in Practice
A typical manual onboarding can take 2-3 hours per client when you include communication, follow-up, and archiving. With a digital solution like ePact, the same process can be completed in under 30 minutes – often faster.
For an accounting firm with 50 new clients annually, this equates to over 100 hours saved. Time you can spend on advisory work rather than administration.
Getting Started
ePact is designed to make digital onboarding simple for accountants. Our platform combines electronic signatures with MitID, KYC collection, and secure document handling. You can create templates for your engagement letter and reuse them for each new client.
Start by digitising one part of the process – for example, signing the engagement letter. Once you experience how much time it saves, the rest will follow naturally.
