Wealth Analytica's letter-of-authority stage generates the LoA from the client's fact-find, sends it for e-signature, tracks chase status across each provider, and pulls the returned data straight into the client record. The four-to-six-week LoA limbo every IFA firm knows about gets a status bar and an owner.
The four-week wait that wasn't built on purpose
You signed a new client three weeks ago. You're still waiting on the second-largest pension to send statements. The first chase email went out a fortnight back; nobody's sure if the second one did. The client emailed yesterday asking when the recommendation would be ready. Your paraplanner says "soon".
We've watched this in firm after firm. NextWealth's Financial Advice Business Benchmarks research finds onboarding a new client typically takes between 2 and 4 weeks from LoA dispatch — against a 48-hour ideal — and that 72% of advisers identify the wait for client data from providers as the primary bottleneck. The slowest-decile firms wait materially longer. New client onboarding shouldn't have a multi-week dark zone in the middle of it. And the reason it does, usually, isn't slow providers — it's no system tracking the chase.
How the WAy LoA workflow runs
From the client record, you tick the providers the LoA should cover. The letter generates from your firm's template with the client's signed-off details pre-filled. The signing flow is built in — your client e-signs from their phone, on their kitchen table, without a printer. The signed LoA generates and gets dispatched to each provider in the format that provider accepts (email, fax-via-email, secure portal upload, post — the system knows). Each dispatch creates a tracked task with an SLA timer.
From that point on you can see, in one view, where each provider sits: dispatched, acknowledged, data returned, exception. Chase emails go out automatically on the firm's chosen cadence. The paraplanner stops being a chaser; the chase chases itself.
Provider intelligence built up over time
The system learns the providers' behaviour. Aviva typically returns inside 9 days. Old Mutual takes longer. A specific small SIPP provider needs a phone call after the second written chase. That intelligence builds up across your firm's history and is shared as the platform's defaults — so a new IFA firm starting on Wealth Analytica inherits a chase cadence already tuned to the industry, not from scratch.
When the data lands
Provider replies that arrive in structured form (Aviva and the major platforms ship machine-readable returns) parse straight into the client record's existing-holdings list. Replies that arrive as PDFs get queued for paraplanner review — but the OCR pre-fills enough of the structure that confirming a return takes minutes, not the half-hour of typing it used to.
The platform won't pretend it can fully automate the PDFs from every provider. What it can do is stop your paraplanner manually transcribing the same fields out of the same templates fifty times a year.
Compliance, audit and the file
Every LoA dispatched is timestamped, retained for the firm's chosen retention period (seven years out of the box per FCA's SYSC 9 expectations), and exportable as a sealed PDF pack. The e-signature audit trail meets the eIDAS 910/2014 requirements that UK law continues to recognise. The chase log is part of the file — when a reviewer asks why this client's onboarding took eight weeks, the answer is in the system.
Where this fits the pipeline
The LoA stage sits between the fact-find and the portfolio analysis. The fact-find tells the LoA which providers to write to. The LoA returns the existing-holdings detail the analytics need. The analytics feed the proposal builder. One record, no rekeying.
Send a real LoA this week
A trial seat, your firm's letterhead in the template, and one of your live clients' LoAs going out before Friday. You'll see the tracking view in action.
Last reviewed: 15 May 2026 · Author: Michael Fasosin · Editor: Anthony Marris · See our editorial policy for our sourcing and review standards.