Agreement Express: Vancouver’s One-stop Shop for Client Onboarding

This time around we’re showcasing an outstanding fintech company that focuses on delivering superior customer service. Agreement Express’ idea was incepted when digital signatures were first introduced. Despite the leap forward in technology, they felt that a fundamental problem still existed: trapped data. So they created a “from start to finish” onboarding solution.

Today, Agreement Express is trusted by Fortune 500 organizations from around the world and has become a respected onboarding automation platform in the financial services industry. Their solution aims to help financial institutions scale while keeping costs down and improve the customer experience for a powerful competitive advantage.

We had the chance to interview Mike Gardner, CEO at Agreement Express about their mission, thoughts on blockchain technology and gain insight on the future of their company.

Trulioo: What is the #1 problem Agreement Express solves for its customers?

Mike: At Agreement Express, we solve the administrative nightmare that is client onboarding in wealth management, payments, banking, insurance, and leasing.

Client onboarding is one of the single biggest bottlenecks in financial services. You capture client data from paper application forms, emails, and digital forms, then you have to pass the application around for approvals and signatures, and it has to make its way to the back office for verification, compliance, and final approvals.

At most financial institutions, onboarding is a mess; it’s extremely expensive, and it holds them back from offering a modern, efficient, digital customer sign-up process. Our onboarding platform solves all those problems.

Trulioo: Has blockchain technology affected Agreement Express’ business? Do you think it’s a popular buzzword with lots of hype or is it here to stay?

Mike: We’ve actually been applying blockchain concepts for years, and yes it’s here to stay. I’m not sure the front and center hype will stick around, but it does have real and useful business applications.

We have been applying blockchain concepts primarily in the leasing space for the perfection of security on electronic chattel paper. But across all industries, we’ve been inspired and helped by blockchain concepts in how to group collections of documents, control who views them, and securely move them around.

Trulioo: What’s next for Agreement Express?

Mike: As for the company as a whole, we are rapidly expanding to meet the growing demand! We recently opened our latest office in Toronto and this milestone is the first of a number in our organization’s growth strategy. We have more European and East coast clients than ever, so it’s important for us to have a greater global presence to service the demand.

On our platform, we’re really looking forward to rolling out a brand new interface based on the new Google Design standards. Google has put thousands of hours into studying human interaction, psychology, and heat-mapping to optimize how we use digital interfaces so we are taking advantage of that.

From a new product standpoint, we are building new extensions that can be added onto the base onboarding platform. These extensions will give powerful functionality to the different verticals we serve while drastically decreasing the time to market. Our clients are eager to innovate and get ahead in the fintech race, they can’t afford to wait 6+ months to roll out a new product.

If there’s a fintech company you’d like to see featured in our Fintechs in Vancouver blog series, please submit your request to [email protected].