A. Customer account
Physical signature to application form is required however the signed form is not used after account opening is completed. (It may be used in case of SEC’s special inspection but it is not a part of regular operations.) We should try to design the process with minimum human intervention and maximum use of online functions. In this regard, we should use physical application forms only for keeping customer’s signature.
Risk rating check for assigning credit limit to each individual customer is a regulatory requirement. This cannot (or should not) be done automatically. Still, as it usually takes less than one minute per account, this process will not affect a lot to the overall processing time frame.
Clearing house (TCH) registration and bank account (ATS) registration seem to have manual intervention. If there is no reason for manual intervention, those process should be fully automated to minimize account open lead time as well as processing costs.
If ATS registration is necessary for automated settlement of trades, we may allow order placement only after ATS registration is completed in order to avoid irregular settlement processing. Another option is that we only allow customers to use “Cash Balance” accounts for settling trades. These options should be defined as a part of our initial requirements.
In case of updating customer information, we should define which information can be updated “self-service” basis and which information cannot be. First, telephone number and email address which are the essential information to contact a customer should not be updated self-service basis. Secondly, changes of authorized ID, house registration and bank passport requires corresponding certificates in the same manner as new account opening. Other customer attributes can be updated by customers themselves.
In case a customer forgot his/her login ID and/or passwords, self-resetting is OK as long as certain profile checks, i.e. asking for address, birthday, secret word, etc.