The Financial Services Cloud features you need for Maximum Organizational Impact
Introduction
As a Salesforce Business Analyst, one of the most impactful projects I’ve contributed to was the implementation of Salesforce Financial Service Cloud (FSC) for a major Canadian bank. In today’s competitive financial landscape, wealth advisors and relationship managers are expected to deliver personalized, compliant, and timely service, often while navigating disconnected legacy systems and complex processes. Salesforce Financial Services Cloud (FSC) has been designed to streamline and elevate the advisor experience, creating a holistic view of the client while automating key workflows.
Implementing FSC isn’t just about technology but it’s focused on solving real advisor pain points.
Why do you need Salesforce FSC?
Before FSC, advisory teams often faced critical challenges that slowed down service, affected client satisfaction, and increased compliance risk. Some of those roadblocks and inefficiencies include:
- Scattered client data across tools and systems
- Manual tracking of KYC, W8BEN, and other regulatory deadlines
- Inefficient onboarding due to lack of structured workflows
- Duplicate profiles from migrations or inconsistent data entry
- Siloed platforms requiring multiple logins and cross-system searches
- Limited visibility into client activity or next-best actions
- FSC directly addresses all of these areas, and several others to help advisors (and clients) get the most out of their platforms.
What are the Benefits of Salesforce FSC?
FSC offers a powerful unified solution tailored for financial institutions. The key features include:
1. Account/Profile for Client Management: This client management feature of FSC reduced advisor search time by up to 30%. While advisors had previously spent most of their time digging through systems or switching between screens, FSC offered consolidated client information in one place (either through one time migration or syncing of real time data with the SOR). The Account/Profile (combination of Accounts & Contacts) object on Salesforce brings everything together in one view, whether it is for a Company, Individual, Former Client or COI.
The Account/Profile presents key information including:
- Financial account Details
- Milestones (DOB, House Purchased, Goals etc)
- Demographics
- Client and account KYC(Know your client) data
- Personalized Bio & notes section
- Service Level Management
- W8ben details
- Activities like Task, Events, log a call etc, everything tied to that Client
- Even attachments & Key Documents all where they should be
One of the most valuable features for client management is Email to Carrier or Client within Salesforce record. This feature on Account/Profile object or case object streamlined communication by allowing advisors to send emails directly to Clients or Carriers (e.g. SunLife, ManuLife etc.) within Salesforce. It eliminated the need to switch between Salesforce and Outlook, reducing clicks and saving time. All communication remained tracked within the client record, ensuring transparency and operational efficiency.
2. Insurance Policy Information: This Custom object significantly improved operational efficiency by 25 – 30% and reduced the risk of premium defaults. Advisors often faced challenges locating Insurance Policy details which led to delays and missed premium payments, impacting client experience. With this feature, critical insurance data such as beneficiaries, joint owners, contact information and due dates were readily available under client record. Collapsible sections further enhanced usability, especially when clients possessed multiple policies.
3. Wealth Management View: This Custom object streamlined investment data retrieval, reducing advisor effort and saving up to 20% of their time. Traditionally, advisors spent considerable time navigating through multiple systems to gather information on client’s investment accounts such as TFSA, FHSA, RIF, RRSP etc. Important relevant fields like Year-to-date (YTD) contributions,PAC and other key information were displayed within single tab, offering a consolidated and view at both the individual and household levels.One of the use case was if client contributed to a TFSA for over 10 years, once aggregating is done, the system quickly shows the unused room if any. Additionally, automated notifications alert for advisors was set whenever a client has available contribution room turning routine reviews into immediate business opportunity. By aggregating and presenting this critical invested data in one place and enabling proactive outreach, this feature became a game changer for effective wealth planning and client engagement.
4. Client 360 View: One of the most impactful features implemented during FSC enhancement was the client 360 view, designed to centralize all critical client data under one tab. This feature not only reduced cross-tab navigation by 35 – 40%, but also improved data visibility, compliance tracking and ultimately resulted in improved client satisfaction. Previously, advisors spent significant time navigating multiple tabs within Salesforce and other systems to compile client information. This fragmented process often caused delays, missed opportunities, and a less personalized client experience. With the Client 360 embedded in Salesforce, advisors could instantly access financial metrics and relationship structures, schedule follow-ups, and perform necessary actions without switching platforms.
5. Household View: The Household object increased cross-sell opportunities by 25%, while significantly improving advisor preparedness and relationship tracking. In the legacy system, advisors often had to manage individual client records separately which made it difficult to see multi member relationships. Household view resolved navigation by grouping related individuals, accounts and activities into a single view. This feature allowed advisors to view all household members and roles, financial data info (Insurance Policies, shared goals, combined assets etc.) which helped advisors to identify new opportunities and resolve conflicts.
6. Accessing Archived Activities: This feature improved historical data access speed by 35% while reducing legacy system license costs. During the Salesforce migration, there was a critical challenge related to management and access to historical client activity data within the retention window. Retaining such a large volume of data directly in Salesforce would significantly increase storage costs while relying on legacy systems was inefficient and costly. With FSC, we were able to come up with a solution that was delivered in three key phases :
- Phase 1 – Salesforce to Snowflake: All client activities older than three years old were moved from Salesforce to Snowflake via CRMA sync out connector including child records like Attachments, Checklist and Categories.
- Phase 2 – Legacy data upload: Client activities between 4 to 10 years old originally residing in legacy systems were uploaded directly into Snowflake along with their child records.
- Phase 3 – Retrieving records on Salesforce: To provide advisors with a seamless experience , “Advanced Search” component was introduced in Salesforce. This allowed users to query both Salesforce and Snowflake data and apply filters like “Search Phrase”, Date, Objects, etc. which ensured a smooth transition.
This phased approach not only reduced dependence on legacy systems but also enabled advisors to access up to 10 years of historical data in Salesforce while saving the company millions in legacy system licenses and storage costs.
7. Activity Plans: Activity Plans object reduced onboarding setup time by 40%, making delivery and onboarding smoother for clients. The client onboarding process was inconsistent across advisors and required manual creation of Task & Events, which often led to delays, missed regulatory steps, and inefficient client experience. A solution was implemented to automate onboarding by using activity plans in FSC – template based workflows that includes preloaded tasks, events, and compliance checkpoints. Each onboarding plan came with a sequence of standardized tasks, including welcome calls and account setup. Task and Events were auto assigned with due dates and sequence logic. Alerts were introduced for approaching due dates, reducing manual follow-ups.
8. Profile Merge: This out of the box functionality made advisors 15% more efficient when it came to fixing client profile issues. Duplicate client profiles are often created across different lobs resulting in duplicate communication and compliance risk. Using profile merge, the winning records and losing records can be defined, helping to prevent data loss.
Another few quick wins with FSC:
Case Management: Case management in FSC helped improve SLA compliance and resolution time by 20%. By leveraging case objects with built-in approval flows across line-of-business resolution processes, unnecessary back and forth efforts were largely eliminated. Advisors often missed attaching important documentation, so introducing validations ensured complete information before submission, reducing delays across business lines.
Internal Lead Tracking: This enhancement boosted referral tracking efficiency by 20%. We enhanced the lead object to effectively track referrals across business units, provisioning real time updates to referrers and improving transparency and more business.
Quick Links: This helped eliminate up to 5 logins per day per advisor. The feature addressed the pain point of an advisor to login to 8 different portals to fetch required information. The Launch button (a custom collection of all links) provided clickable links that automatically navigated the advisor to the client’s page on other portals, improving the usability and experience for the advisor.
Final thoughts on Financial Services Cloud
Salesforce Financial Services Cloud can modernize how financial institutions operate; but it takes more than software. It takes strategy, process insight and cross-functional alignment to ensure that FSC implementation is deeply rooted in actual advisor needs and organizational goals. When done right, FSC becomes more than a platform–it becomes a competitive advantage.
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