A client onboarding program is an essential part of any service provider’s operation. An efficient, comprehensive and compliant program can establish lasting trust between the provider and its clients, whereas a slipshod program that allows for delays, regulatory lapses and other errors will frustrate clients and put them at risk.

Given our increasingly strict and complex global regulatory landscape, a well-designed client onboarding program is more important than ever — and more difficult to develop and maintain. Fulfilling know-your-customer, or KYC, verification checks is a critical step in the onboarding process, but there are other steps that are not as widely known.

When a multinational organisation performs due diligence on a corporate service provider, it should not neglect the area of client onboarding. Does the provider have a dedicated client onboarding team, and if so, for which services? What are the main challenges of onboarding and how does the provider overcome them? What technology does the provider use? What information does the provider require?

To answer these and other questions, we interviewed three Vistra experts with a combined dozens of years of onboarding experience.

Christina Salvo is the executive director and head of client onboarding at Vistra for US-based corporate clients. Darren Beal is the portfolio director for Vistra’s global payroll services. Marc Hrabak is the director of international operations, leading the global services team in Asia and overseeing international expansion services in Singapore.