E-signature for financial advisers
docuinked can carry the routine signing in an advisory practice, such as engagement letters, fee schedules and vendor contracts, but your firm must check its own recordkeeping and supervision rules before relying on it, because we make no regulatory claims.
Start with your rules, not ours
Advisory and brokerage firms work under rules about records and supervision. Those rules fall on your firm. docuinked doesn't claim to meet any of them. Two examples your firm may need to assess:
- FINRA amended Rule 4512 to allow electronic signatures for discretionary account authorisations, effective 6 May 2019. See Notice 19-13.
- The SEC's 2022 changes to Rule 17a-4 added an audit-trail alternative to the old write-once storage rule for broker-dealer records. See this summary of the amendments.
FINRA has also warned firms about forged and falsified electronic signatures, which is a supervision issue. See this summary of Notice 22-18. Talk to your compliance lead before you move any regulated document. A common pattern is to keep docuinked for the business side and export every sealed PDF and record into your own archive.
What an advisory practice signs
- Engagement letters and planning agreements, close to a consulting agreement.
- Fee schedule acknowledgements and annual fee changes.
- Privacy notice and policy acknowledgements.
- Staff offer letters and handbook acknowledgements.
- Vendor agreements and mutual NDAs with software and research providers.
- Partnership agreements and letters of intent when practices merge or a book is bought.
Account opening forms at a custodian usually go through the custodian's own systems. Keep them there.
A workflow story
A two-adviser planning firm charges a flat annual fee. Each January, a few clients move to a new fee tier.
- The operations manager updates fee tiers in the client spreadsheet.
- A Zapier step fills a one-page fee acknowledgement for each changed client.
- It calls
create_documentwith the client, or both spouses, as signers, using a key set to "Needs my approval". - The lead adviser opens each approval link and reads the fee and the client name. Approves.
- Clients sign from their email. The record shows the disclosure, the viewing and the signing.
document.completedtriggers a step that fetches the sealed PDF and evidence and copies both to the firm's own archive.
Step 6 matters most. The firm's archive is the record its rules care about, not ours.
An agent example
An adviser using ChatGPT or Claude connected by MCP might ask: "Prepare engagement letters for the two new households from Tuesday, using our template." The agent drafts both and asks to send. The adviser reads each draft at its approval_url and approves or rejects. The agent can't send alone and can't sign. That keeps the person who is accountable for the advice in front of each document. See human-in-the-loop.
For anything higher value, add an access code and give it to the client by phone, so a stranger with the client's inbox can't open it alone.
For advisory software
If you build planning or practice software, each firm can be a sub-account under your one API key, with your name, logo and colour on signer pages and emails, and docuinked branding removable. You can embed signing in a client portal on allowed sites. Emails still come from docuinked's address until custom sending domains, which are coming. Your customers will ask about audits. We don't have SOC 2 yet, and our security page says what we do have. See platforms.
What docuinked doesn't do here
- No regulatory claims. We don't claim to meet any securities, insurance or banking rule.
- No archive for regulated records. Export and keep your own.
- No ID or knowledge-based checks. ID checks are coming.
- No SOC 2 report. Not yet.
Sources
Checked 2026-11-07.
- FINRA Regulatory Notice 19-13
- Mayer Brown on SEC Rule 17a-4 amendments, 2022
- JD Supra on FINRA Notice 22-18
Common questions
Can both spouses sign one engagement letter?
Yes. List both as signers. Set ordered to false so they can sign from separate emails in any order.
Can we pull every signed record into our own archive automatically?
Yes. On document.completed, call get_signed_pdf and get_evidence, and store both. That keeps your archive complete even if you later change tools.
Does a docuinked approval count as supervisory review?
That is for your firm to decide under its own procedures. The approval record shows who approved which exact draft and when. Whether that meets your supervision duties is a compliance question, not a product one.
Should advisers use their own account or a shared one?
Give each person their own login with two-factor sign-in. The record then names the real approver, which is the point of having one.
Related
Try it in test mode
Free during the beta. Test keys send no email, so you can build the whole flow first.