Wealth managers rely on data every day to inform their expert assessments, financial guidance, and strategic decisions. If that data is inaccurate, though, it can do more harm than good, compromising wealth managers’ ability to effectively manage their clients’ assets. They also need to maintain meticulous records for potential audits; failure to do so has serious legal consequences.
Let’s look at why wealth managers need safeguards in place to ensure they’re working with accurate data and three tips for how to improve data entry accuracy.
Data Entry Errors in Wealth Management
Data entry errors can easily occur from issues such as transposing a number wrong, a misplaced decimal, or a missed keystroke. Data entry errors can have severe consequences in wealth management, making accuracy essential. Some possible ripple effects caused by inaccurate data include:
- Poor strategic decisions
- Negative client experience
- Damaged reputation
- Reduced profit
- Erroneous records
How to Improve Data Entry Accuracy
We know accuracy is key, but how can you achieve that precision? Here are three possible ways to minimize errors for highly accurate financial data.
1. Standardize your approach.
Errors are likely to creep in when you take a haphazard approach to data entry. For example, you might pull in an intern to work on data entry one day and tackle it yourself another day, leaving it up to the individual to figure out their own process.
Having a standardized workflow can help you collect, input, and verify data in a consistent manner so you can avoid errors—especially errors of omission. By having a consistent process to follow, you can ensure you’re working with a complete and up-to-date set of data and not accidentally leaving anything out.
Standardization not only helps with accuracy—it can also improve the efficiency of your process. This means you can spend more time on wealth planning and client communications.
2. Institute double-blind data entry.
One of the best ways to avoid errors is to enter data twice. If the data is entered identically each time, then it’s likely accurately transcribed. If the data entries don’t match up, then one of them contains an error. This approach is known as double-blind data entry or review.
Studies show double-blind data entry is the most effective means of improving manual data entry accuracy, but it is also the slowest. When speed isn’t a high priority, you can take double-blind data entry even further by entering data three times, which is known as triple-blind review.
Another measure you can take is to have two separate people perform the data entry for double-blind review. When one person enters the data, they could make the same mistake multiple times, meaning the system won’t detect an error. Two or three different people are less likely to make the same mistake, so in this scenario, having two or three matching entries is more likely a sign that the data is accurate.
3. Opt for intelligent automation.
When you need to pair accuracy with speed and efficiency, the best solution is automation. This first involves using optical character recognition (OCR) and computer vision to digitize text. Software powered by artificial intelligence (AI) then identifies relevant data points in a document and either makes those data points more accessible on an indexed cover sheet or automatically feeds them into your business systems.
Some wealth managers are wary of adopting this solution because they’re familiar with yesterday’s OCR technology, which lacked the level of precision wealth managers need. They fear the computer might make mistakes that a human wouldn’t.
While that was true at one time, modern solutions that use OCR and AI can actually achieve a higher level of accuracy than people can. Notable Systems’ intelligent data extraction solution can capture and enter data from a variety of sources with an extremely high standard of accuracy.
You can keep humans in the loop for a time while you transition to this approach in order to see its effectiveness firsthand and train the software on the less straightforward steps involved in your process of data extraction and entry. After this stage, you can enjoy the full benefits of automation, which can save you significant time and money in addition to improving accuracy.
Start Automating Data Entry and Improving Accuracy
Wealth managers can’t afford to have inconsistent or error-prone approaches to data. If you’re considering how to improve data entry accuracy and are ready to overhaul your manual processes in favor of a more streamlined, technology-driven approach, Notable Systems offers the ideal solution. Schedule a consultation, and let us know how we can help your firm improve its approach to data entry.
