Client experience · Wealth & financial services

Modernising the digital experience for investors, members and clients.

We design the experience layer that sits above your CRM, registry and portfolio systems, modernising onboarding, self-service and investor experience without replacing what already works.

Book a strategy session See the work
  • Salesforce and registry API integration
  • Built around your existing systems
  • NZ & AU delivery
Illustration of two hands holding phones: a portfolio home showing Eleanor's portfolio value and recent activity, and an onboarding step verifying identity
GCD builds
Experience layer
Client · Member · Investor
Connected by API
You keep
Systems of record
CRM · Registry · Portfolio · Document store

Deep experience across financial services.

Our team has delivered digital initiatives across wealth management, investment platforms, financial advice and market infrastructure organisations throughout New Zealand and Australia.

Smartshares
QuayStreet Investment Management
NZX
Consilium
The gap

Most wealth and investment systems weren’t built for clients.

CRMs were built for advisers.

Registry and portfolio systems were built for operations teams.

Onboarding still travels through email and PDFs.

Meanwhile, clients, members and investors expect the same fluency they get from their bank, across every channel.

Today

Fragmented systems, disconnected experience

  • Onboarding stretched across email, PDFs and manual review
  • Several logins and portals that don’t talk to each other
  • Documents collected manually, then re-collected
  • Identity and verification checks that stall mid-journey
  • Clients left guessing where their application stands
With GCD

One cohesive experience layer

  • A single guided onboarding journey across channels
  • One secure portal that unifies the client view
  • Documents collected once and reused everywhere
  • Existing systems remain the source of truth
  • Clients always know exactly what happens next
What we do

Experiences built around regulated client workflows.

Connected capabilities that sit on top of the systems you already run. We connect to your platforms. We don’t replace them.

Client onboarding

Turn the first weeks of a relationship into a single guided journey: identity verification, document collection, digital forms and workflow automation, built for the checks regulated firms have to make.

IdentityDocumentsFormsWorkflow

Client portals

A secure, branded home for the relationship: investor, member and adviser portals that bring statements, documents and requests into one place clients actually want to use.

InvestorMemberAdviser

Mobile experiences

Native iOS and Android experiences that increase engagement and self-service, as one channel in a connected whole, not the whole strategy.

iOSAndroidManaged lifecycle

AI & automation

Client support and knowledge assistants, plus workflow automation, grounded in your content and governed by your rules.

AssistantsKnowledgeAutomation

Experience integration

Connecting CRM, registry, portfolio and business systems into one cohesive client experience, so every channel reads from the same source of truth.

CRMRegistryPortfolioAPIs
The difference

We connect to your systems. We don’t replace them.

Your CRM, registry and portfolio systems already hold the source of truth. We improve how clients, members and investors interact with them.

Why experience matters

Experience is becoming the competitive advantage.

Client expectations keep rising.

Operational efficiency remains a strategic priority.

That’s why financial services organisations are investing in onboarding, self-service and digital servicing.

01

Onboarding sets the tone

Becoming a client sets the tone for the whole relationship. Slow, fragmented onboarding creates friction before trust is established.

02

Expectations are set by the best

Clients measure every interaction against the best experiences they have anywhere, not only other financial firms.

03

Self-service reduces operational burden

Every routine task a client or member completes themselves is one less request your team handles manually.

04

Experience drives retention

Clients who can easily access information and act digitally stay more active, engaged and satisfied.

Case studies

Modernising client experience. Proven in practice.

How we help wealth and financial services organisations deliver better onboarding, self-service and digital experiences, working with the systems they already have.

Investor onboarding

Silent Catalyst

Digital onboarding and identity verification: forms, document collection and workflow automation in one journey.

Read case study →
Illustration of a tablet held in two hands showing a guided investor onboarding flow
Investor self-service

Consilium Fund Comparison Calculator

Fund comparison and analytics that let investors and members act without manual support.

Read case study →
Illustration of a tablet held in two hands showing the Fund Comparison Calculator
Mobile investor experience

Investor Mobile Experience Platform

Secure, mobile-first access to portfolio information, communications and self-service for investors.

Read case study →
Illustration of an investor using a mobile app beside an oversized app screen
Client portals & servicing

Investment Portal Upgrade

A unified client portal with secure communications and connected digital servicing.

Read case study →
Illustration of a tablet held in two hands showing an investor portal
How we work

We work alongside your team, not around them.

“The best client experiences come out of architecture workshops with the people who actually run the business: engineering, compliance, operations, the front office. The experience is the surface; the real work is alignment and integration.”

— Ash Hart, Founder & Principal
Ash Hart, Founder and Principal of GCD
Ash Hart
Founder & Principal, GCD
Tim Parkman, Head of Strategy at GCD
Tim Parkman
Head of Strategy, GCD
Engagement model

Architecture first. Built for regulated environments.

Four structured phases, each with clear deliverables and sign-off gates. Architecture review and integration discovery sit at the front, where they belong.

  1. 1

    Discovery & blueprint

    Stakeholder workshops, integration discovery, and a written architecture and scope blueprint your CIO and compliance teams can sign off against.

    2–3 weeks
  2. 2

    UX & technical validation

    Interaction design, prototypes, integration mapping and security model, approved before any code is written.

    3–4 weeks
  3. 3

    Build & integration

    Agile delivery in two-week increments. We build the experience layer and integrate cleanly with the systems that hold your data.

    8–16 weeks · MVP
  4. 4

    Launch & phased rollout

    App Store and Play Store deployment, monitoring and a sustained release cadence. Retained partnership beyond launch.

    Ongoing
From the workshop

Every engagement starts with a shared diagram on a wall.

Before code, before scope, before estimates, we run an architecture workshop with your engineering, operations and client experience teams. The blueprint that comes out of it is what the rest of the engagement runs on.

  1. A1Mapping existing systems and integration points
  2. A2Identifying the workflows that move into the experience layer
  3. A3Agreeing the security and governance model
  4. A4Sequencing phased rollout against operational risk
Integration sketch: the client experience layer (onboarding, portal, mobile, AI) connects over secure mTLS to a secure API gateway with role-based access, audit and OAuth 2, which reads and writes to the registry, Salesforce CRM and SharePoint document store. Systems of record stay unchanged.
Why GCD

Specialists in experience transformation for financial services.

Not a CRM implementer, not a backend replacement consultancy. A focused studio that improves how your clients experience your business and leaves your systems intact.

We understand regulated environments

We work alongside compliance, operations, product and technology teams so every solution aligns with governance, security and operational requirements.

We integrate with existing platforms

CRM, registry, portfolio, document and identity systems stay the source of truth. We build better client, member and investor experiences around them.

We focus on adoption

Technology only creates value when people use it. We design onboarding, portals and mobile experiences that clients, investors and members actually engage with.

  • Wealth management
  • Asset management
  • KiwiSaver & superannuation
  • Financial advice
  • Investor & member experience
  • Digital servicing
Security & integration

Enterprise-grade delivery, designed around your systems.

Designed first for the experience your clients feel, then engineered so the risk, compliance and operations teams who sign it off are comfortable too.

Secure authentication

SSO, biometric authentication and MFA.

API integrations

REST, GraphQL, OAuth and event-driven integrations.

Role-based access

Fine-grained permissions and scopes.

Operational visibility

Across approvals, workflows and client interactions.

Client workflows

Onboarding, approvals and self-service servicing.

Enterprise rollout

App Store, Play Store and enterprise-managed distribution.

Connects to · stays in place Salesforce Dynamics HubSpot SharePoint Registry APIs Custom platforms

Planning to modernise the experience for your investors, members or clients?

A 45-minute strategy session to walk through your journeys, your systems, and where the experience layer can move the needle, with no obligation.

Strategy session
  • 45 minutes, no obligation
  • Architecture-led · Integration-ready
  • NDA on request
Book a strategy session Or explore managed lifecycle