Moving can be an incredibly stressful experience —
Advisors have their own version of packing boxes and change-of-address forms: repapering client accounts after a firm switch, or scrambling to find a locally licensed attorney when a client relocates.
Both processes have long meant redoing work that's already been done — chasing down data, sourcing new experts, starting from scratch. Now, a wave of
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Repapering amid the info avalanche
According to the
While moving, advisors face challenges such as client attrition, legal and regulatory scrutiny, and the often-maligned requirement of repapering their client information. Advisors moving toward independence and firms consolidating teams both feel the same slog.
Rob Nance, co-founder of Dispatch, a client onboarding and records maintenance service provider, is a former advisor with his share of frustrating repapering events to his name.
"I spent so much time entering the same data over and over again," he said, often "having to go ask clients for data," only to discover he already had it on file. The forms themselves compounded the problem, according to Nance, since they "are not always very clear on how you have to fill them out."
The lag also scales with data volume. If 50 independent brands need to be merged into one, "how do we make it easier if we have to repaper thousands of accounts at the custodian?" Nance said.
Avoiding the NIGO maze
Repapering also creates recurring hurdles when an advisor presumes the information is in good standing, only to have it flagged as not in good order, or NIGO, with rates that can run anywhere from 25% to 40%. Each round trip erodes something else, too.
"When you ask your client to sign something, and it comes back from the custodian, and you have to get them to sign the same document again that's slightly modified, there's a little bit of trust that's often lost there," Nance said.
Dispatch's first step is sending data requests to clients directly, and then reconciling the information against sources like an old CRM or spreadsheet. When the system detects a discrepancy such as a last name spelling or two mailing addresses, it routes the issue to a human for review and nothing reaches custodian paperwork until a person confirms it.
The result, Nance said, is that household onboarding shrank from about five hours to 30 minutes, and presubmission validation cut NIGO rates by about 90%. Advisors comparing tools should ask where that human review happens: before or after the data reaches the custodian.
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Locating quality experts at client destinations
Advisors aren't the only ones moving. An estimated
"If I make a referral, it's going to reflect poorly on me," said Tim Fisk, senior vice president of NetLaw, a division of the estate planning law firm Hargrove. This creates a duty-of-care issue, not just a scheduling one.
The farther away a client moves, the more the need for localized experts increases.
"I can't use my New Jersey attorney for my California-based client," Fisk said. "I have to go out now and source somebody to do that."
But, sourcing is only the start: "I think ongoing management of that, when you have now 10, 20, [or] 30 different folks that are touching your clients — the ongoing coordination and management of that becomes even more difficult."
The localized, streamlined solution
NetLaw is a service that vets attorneys so they can more easily provide estate-planning and legal services across all 50 states, with centralized, fixed-fee pricing regardless of jurisdiction.
"I don't have to worry about what it's going to cost my client in California versus Idaho," Fisk said.
Unlike Dispatch, which points to hard efficiency numbers, NetLaw's case rests on consistency and risk reduction rather than a quantifiable time or cost savings — the pitch is fewer bad referrals and fewer surprises, not a faster process.
Both companies lean on AI to remove friction rather than replace judgment. Dispatch's AI reads incoming client data in whatever format it arrives, organizes it into households, clients and accounts, and reconciles records across sources — but a human still signs off before anything moves forward. Netlaw uses AI mainly to streamline document intake for its attorney network.
Fisk is careful not to oversell it: "Relatively speaking, we're probably in the third inning of how we could use it."
Fisk also said NetLaw remains mindful that easy access to AI can tempt advisors to answer estate planning-adjacent questions themselves.
"Advisors [are] being put in a position where they're being asked [to] step out of their regulatory comfort zone in terms of the type and extent of the advice they can give," he said. "And that then bleeds into more legal advice."
