One million characters. 32,000 errors prevented.
11/03/26 · By Joseph Williams
The hidden cost of rekeying client data – and how to reduce it
Rekeying client data into technology remains a silent killer for financial advice firms. It not only creates operational friction, but also poses an ongoing threat to data integrity. Studies suggest that for every 100 characters of data manually keyed, around 3.2 errors occur. In isolation, that might sound manageable. But when you consider the volume of data being rekeyed throughout our profession, the scale of the problem becomes more alarming.
This issue is felt most acutely with investment platforms. In many cases, financial advice firms still need to manually key client data into their chosen investment platform when opening a new account. The consequences of this are measurable – research by intelliflo found one in five client onboarding cases contains errors directly attributable to rekeying. And if those errors are not picked up, they can have significant consequences in both the short and longer term.
In an ideal world, this process would be handled through secure API integrations, allowing data to be pushed from a source system (for example, a back-office) into an investment platform. Some platforms, including Transact, Fidelity and Fundment, have developed APIs to support this. However, API availability remains patchy. Many investment platforms do not currently offer them, leaving financial advice firms with little choice but to rely on rekeying data.
This gap is what prompted us to develop the form filling functionality within our Web Browser Extension. Yes, our preference is always API first. But rather than treat integration as binary – either full API integration or manual keying – form filling acts as a practical middle option. It enables financial advice firms to push client data directly into forms within their chosen investment platform, reducing the amount of rekeying required and, critically, helping reduce the risk of errors.
Since launching our Web Browser Extension in June 2025, financial advice firms have pushed more than one million characters of data into investment platforms using this form filling functionality. That’s one million characters that otherwise would have been manually keyed. And based on the error rate cited above, that equates to approximately 32,000 keying errors prevented – errors which would have otherwise entered the process.
To learn more about how ZeroKey’s Web Browser Extension can help, and to see which investment platforms are supported either via API or form fill, please click here. A few form fill examples have also been included below.
(Please note: intelliflo have a white-labelled version of ZeroKey's Web Browser Extension for their users, with all other technology providers available on the normal version of ZeroKey. The helpful videos included below are a mix of both versions).
How to populate the 'client details' form within 7IM (new application)
How to populate the 'add client' form within Quilter
How to populate the 'create new investor' form within SS&C Hubwise