Email and Client Portals: Complementary, Not Conflicting

In recent years, a debate has emerged about the effectiveness of two different client communication channels among financial advice firms: email and client portals. We've spoken to many financial advisories that are lobbying for the use of either one or the other, but rarely both.

Firms are missing a golden opportunity.

Instead of choosing between email and portals, why not have the best of both worlds?

You might have expected us, an email encryption company, to stand firmly within 'Team Email'.

Instead, we count ourselves wise enough to know this isn’t always the right option.

By pairing email with client portals, we can ensure communications are timely and help to increase the famously low rate of portal uptake.

Client Portals On The Rise

As we progress through the digital era, advisories are asking themselves, “What is the best way to communicate with our clients?”.

A tricky question, considering businesses need to think about factors such as integrations, ease of use, and cost-effectiveness.

On top of this, cybersecurity is a major issue. How can we make sure the data we are communicating is secure?

Email remains a popular means of client interaction.

However, due to a lack of fine-tuning since its creation, messages sent by email remain largely unsecured.

Given that the average office worker sends 40 emails a day, you can see why this is a commonly targeted link in the business communications chain.

This is especially concerning when you find out that cybercrime takes place every 30 seconds.

To counter the security gap with email, the client portal was born, providing advice firms with a secure digital space to connect with their clients.

Portals offer a user-friendly blend of in-browser accessibility and highly personalised data, ensuring customers are presented with the most relevant information.

They have become an increasingly popular investment for companies, with 88% of people expecting them to be a standard service provided to them.

Reducing Password Fatigue

The question is: are portals being used to their full potential?

The answer, for now, appears to be no, as consumer adoption remains a challenge, with businesses reporting over 60% non-engagement rates despite committing significant resources towards portal development.

A study within the healthcare sector reveals that, although people are aware of and even register for multiple portals, they do not use them regularly, with only 30% of people logging in frequently.

A key reason for non-engagement with portals is ‘password fatigue’.

People are expected to create login details for a large portion of the businesses they interact with.

Research from NordPass confirms that the average person has up to 100 passwords.

This leads to 25% of people forgetting a password at least once a day; a frustration that causes individuals to reuse similar passwords across different logins, leaving themselves open to being exploited.

Bearing this in mind, it’s understandable why some may limit their use of portals if they are seen as just another chance to get stuck in an “I forgot my password” loop.

People will always choose the path of least resistance. In the face of password fatigue, staff and clients disengage with portals and turn to email for the immediacy it provides.

This means sensitive data is still being communicated in open-risk environments, leaving investment-heavy portals under-appreciated.

Pushing Inbound Engagement

What can advice businesses do to safely transfer client data and ensure their engagement?

The solution lies in the delivery of secure email, to work alongside and support the use of client portal applications.

Combining a client portal with secure email boosts communication efficiency without compromising on data security.

Not only does encrypted email showcase your business as an organisation dedicated to the protection of clients' data, but it can push important information into their inboxes that then pulls them into your portal.

Leveraging people’s habitual reliance on email for urgent communications, email messages can nudge clients to engage with important documents.

Secure email can be used to extend and highlight the self-service capabilities of a portal, reminding clients of the fortress of personalised information to which they have 24/7 access.

Complementary, Not Conflicting

Portals and email may seem like opposing sides but, when properly integrated, can complement each other’s features and expand your communication facilities.

Secure email, by nature, does not remove the need for client portals, or vice versa.

Instead, it’s important for businesses to recognise the capabilities that both technologies can bring to the table, with each providing different USPs that can be used at the right time and place for the most appropriate engagement.

From our own experience of building email encryption into advice firms’ operations, it is when portals and emails work together that communication is most seamless and efficient.

References

How Many Work Emails Is Too Many?, The Guardian, 2019

39 Worrying Cyber Crime Statistics, Legal Jobs, 2023

Share of Customers Expecting Self-Service Portals, Statista, 2022

Study on Healthcare Sector Portal Use, NCBI, 2016

How Many Passwords Does the Average Person Have?, Tech.co, 2023

Suffer from Password Rage?, The Week, 2016

Reviewed by

Sabrina McClune, 05.06.24

Sam Kendall, 05.06.24