Independent financial advisors, IFAs, and wealth managers need more than a sales tracker. Tonic Desk models KYC and AML workflows, holds households together across multiple accounts, schedules AUM reviews on cadence, and keeps the contemporaneous notes that FINRA, FCA, and SEC examiners actually look for.
The passport scan is in email. The proof of address is on a network drive. The risk tolerance questionnaire is a PDF someone signed in 2022. When the next compliance review hits, your operations lead spends two weeks rebuilding the KYC file from scattered sources.
The Smith family has a joint ISA, two SIPPs, a junior account for each child, and a trust. Your CRM models them as five separate contacts with no connection. You service one client; the dashboard shows you serving five. Reviews get duplicated. Birthday cards get awkward.
The compliance manual says every client gets an annual suitability review. Some clients are quarterly. Some are semi-annual. Tracking the cadence happens in someone's head and a partially maintained Excel file. By year-end you discover six clients have not had a review in 18 months — and now the regulator wants to know why.
A client calls. They want to switch from balanced to growth. The advisor writes a note on a sticky pad. Twelve months later the market drops, the client claims they never asked for growth, and there is no contemporaneous record. The complaint becomes a regulatory matter because the file is silent.
A new-client workflow generates a folder of required documents — proof of ID, proof of address, source of funds declaration, suitability questionnaire, terms of business. Uploads are tagged, expiry dates trigger automatic re-verification at 5 years (UK) or 3 years (US AML risk-based), and the deal record cannot move past Onboarded until every required document is on file.
Create a Household company record. Attach individual contacts (each spouse, each adult child) as members. Attach accounts (joint ISA, SIPP, GIA, trust) as deals tagged with product type and current value. Reports roll up AUM per household. Birthday workflows fire per individual. Suitability reviews fire per account. One family, one relationship, all the moving parts visible.
Each account carries a Review frequency field — Annual, Semi-Annual, Quarterly, Monthly. A recurring automation creates a review task 30 days before the due date, with a templated agenda, the latest valuation, and a link to the suitability questionnaire. Overdue reviews escalate to the compliance officer. The dashboard answers "show me every review owed in the next 60 days" in one click.
Every client interaction logs as a structured note with date, channel (phone, email, in-person, video), summary, advice given, products discussed, and follow-up actions. Notes are immutable after 24 hours — edits create an addendum with the original preserved. The full client file exports as a single PDF for any audit window — sufficient for FINRA 4511, FCA SYSC 9, or SEC 17a-4 record-keeping requirements.