Top 7 IT Must Haves for Financial Services Firms

If you run a financial advisory, wealth practice, accounting firm, or mortgage broking office on the Northern Beaches and North Shore, two things matter most: trust and time. The right IT setup protects client data, keeps your team productive, and gives you clean evidence for insurers and auditors without unnecessary complexity. The tips below are practical, repeatable, and easy to action.

---

1) Automate Client Onboarding

Why it matters: Firms spend a lot of time with manual processes when onboarding clients and tech-savvy customers appreciate less paper forms.
Do this:

• Use Microsoft Forms to digitise any intake forms
• Use Power Automate or Zapier to automatically create an onboarding checklist in Microsoft Planner and automatically assign tasks to your team
• Automate client contracts and welcome packs being sent out

What good looks like: Client onboarding process is streamlined and automated as much as possible

Added bonus: Use Power Automate or Zapier to automate tasks between applications like AdvisorLogic or Xplan and Microsoft 365/Google Workspace

---

2) Use Microsoft Teams Premium or Copilot to transcribe client meetings

Why it matters: Reduce the time burden for compliance and admin after client meetings
Do this:

• Use either Teams Premium, or Copilot for Microsoft 365
• Create reusable prompts that can extract and interpret transcripts for different reasons (e.g. Compliance, Portfolio changes, Administration)

What good looks like: Client meetings are recorded and transcribed with AI, negating the need to manually take notes or transcribe.

Note: There are many free AI assistants at the moment, but it’s advised to not use these due to data privacy reasons.

---

3) Use Copilot to turn those transcriptions into a file note / ROA

Why it matters: Doing these manually can take significant time and attention.
Do this:

• Use Copilot to transform that transcription into a ROA or File Note
• Give the prompt as much information and detail as possible as to the format and requirements

What good looks like: Copilot turns these into a compliance ready ROA for you, saving manual typing after a client interaction.

What excellent looks like: Create a Copilot Agent that has all of the templates, requirements and preferences saved allowing you to automatically create these documents

---

4) Make email and files safer for client data

Why it matters: Email is the main client touchpoint and a common data leak path.
Do this:

• Enable Defender for Office 365 for anti-phish, Safe Links, and Safe Attachments.
• Enable Spoofing protection for directors and executives
• Apply Sensitivity Labels that enforce encryption.
• Add simple DLP rules for TFNs and ID documents.
• Share via SharePoint or OneDrive links with expiry and permissions, not attachments.

What good looks like: Encrypted advice statements, labelled client folders, links replacing attachments.

---

5) Lock down identities in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace

Why it matters: Most breaches start with a compromised login.
Do this:

• Enforce MFA for every user with number matching.
• Use Conditional Access to block legacy protocols, require compliant devices, and step up MFA from risky locations.
• Separate admin accounts and use time-bound admin access.
• Turn on security defaults or a hardened baseline in Business Premium.

What good looks like: 100 percent MFA coverage, no basic or SMTP auth, no standing global admins.

---

6) Keep an evidence pack for insurers and audits

Why it matters: Cyber insurance questionnaires are getting stricter.
Do this:

• Maintain an asset inventory, MFA coverage report, admin list, and patch compliance snapshot.
• Store backup logs, phishing test results, and email security settings.
• Keep an Incident Response Plan and a short Business Continuity Plan.
• Review quarterly and export to a single evidence folder.

What good looks like: You can answer most insurer questions in minutes with documentation ready.

---

7) Use Microsoft Bookings to let clients schedule meetings

Why it matters: The back-and-forth required to book meetings can add up
Do this:

• Configure Microsoft Bookings, or Calendly
• Create a link and add it to your email signature and any correspondence
• Create various meeting types “Portfolio Review”, “Quarterly Check-in” to allow clients to book different durations

What good looks like: Clients book meetings through the booking link, rather than back-and-forth “does this time work for you?”

---

Other quick wins for Northern Beaches firms

• Add dual WAN or 5G failover for offices that are sensitive to NBN outages across suburbs such as Manly, Brookvale, Dee Why, and Mona Vale.
• For multi site teams, standardise SharePoint structures and labels so staff can move between offices without friction.
• If you host client meetings in office, set up reliable meeting room audio and video and ensure private Wi Fi coverage.

---

A simple 90 day roadmap

Days 1 to 30: Cybersecurity Audit, Enable AI transcriptions for Teams Meetings
Days 31 to 60: Automate onboarding processes, implement Sensitivity Labels and DLP
Days 61 to 90: Build the evidence pack, run a data recovery test, complete an access review, automate booking to signed documents.

---

Next step

If you want a low effort way to validate where you stand, request a free IT Check for Northern Beaches and North Shore financial services firms. You will receive a plain English 90 day action plan focused on security, productivity, and audit ready evidence.