Automating Client Requests in a Fiduciary Firm

Key Takeaways

• Receipts, status questions and missing documents can largely run automatically. Advice and assessments stay with your people.
• Official mail such as tax assessments or payment orders starts short statutory deadlines and reaches the responsible person the same day.
• A checklist per mandate and year is what makes automatic chasing of missing documents work.
• Before client data goes to a provider, make sure no duty of secrecy forbids it and that the provider can keep the data secure.
• Start the pilot with one team a few weeks before tax season, not in the middle of it.

A fiduciary firm can automate much of the routine around client requests. A system recognises who is writing and about which mandate, files incoming documents, answers standard questions from the client file and chases missing paperwork. Anything with a deadline, every tax or legal assessment and every request that needs advice goes to the responsible person, sorted and summarised. The firm stays responsible for every answer, so the rules have to be clear before anything runs on its own.

This guide builds on our article on answering inquiries automatically and applies its logic to what makes a fiduciary firm different: mandates, documents, statutory deadlines and confidentiality.

What do clients write to their fiduciary about?

Look through a few weeks of mail and you'll find the same six groups again and again.

• Documents arriving: receipts, bank statements, salary statements, pillar 3a certificates, often as phone photos or forwarded emails with several attachments.
• Status questions: has my tax return gone in, when are we meeting about the annual accounts, did you get my receipts?
• Requests for documents: a copy of last year's tax return, a salary statement, a confirmation for the bank.
• Changes: a new hire, a salary change, a new address, a new bank account.
• Official mail that clients forward: tax assessments, letters from the Federal Tax Administration about VAT, payment orders from the debt collection office.
• Advice questions: should I set up a limited company, can I deduct this, what does the new rule mean for me?

The first four groups are routine and lend themselves to automation. The last two need a person, and the official mail needs one quickly.

Why does official mail go to a person the same day?

Because it often starts a short statutory deadline. An objection to a tax assessment can be filed in writing within 30 days of notification (Art. 132 DBG for the direct federal tax, Art. 48 StHG for cantonal and communal taxes). An objection to a payment order (Rechtsvorschlag) has to be declared within ten days of service (Art. 74 SchKG). And VAT has to be settled within 60 days of the end of the reporting period (Art. 71 MWSTG).

A system can recognise documents like these, note the date of receipt and put them on the responsible person's list the same day, with a note on the likely deadline for them to confirm. It shouldn't answer them, and it certainly shouldn't leave them sitting in a general inbox. Your team works out the exact deadline, because it depends on when the document was actually served.

How does the system know which mandate a request belongs to?

It compares the sender with your client list and reads names, company names, UID numbers or references from the message and its attachments. One person can belong to several mandates, for example with their private tax return and their limited company. When it's ambiguous, the system asks back or hands over to a person. Once the mandate is clear, the system knows who is responsible, which tasks are open and which documents are still missing.

How does automatic chasing of missing documents work?

With a checklist per mandate and year. For each mandate you note which documents you need for the tax return or the annual accounts: bank and securities statements, salary statements, pillar 3a certificates and so on. When documents arrive, the system ticks them off. Before a date you set, it drafts a reminder in your tone that lists exactly what's still missing. Your team approves the first rounds, and once the reminders are reliably right, they can go out automatically. Clients get one clear list instead of three separate emails, and your team can see at a glance which mandates are complete.

What may a system answer on its own?

Only what's in the client file or in your firm's own rules, and only where a wrong answer can't do harm. Tax rules also differ from canton to canton, which is one more reason not to let a system answer from general knowledge.

• Automatically: confirming receipt of documents, listing what's missing, explaining how to upload to your portal, offering appointment slots, reporting the status of a task your software already tracks.
• As a draft for review: requests for copies of documents, questions about an invoice, changes to payroll data.
• Always to a person: official mail with deadlines, any tax or legal assessment, unhappy clients and anything unusual.

What does confidentiality mean for the set-up?

A fiduciary firm knows its clients' finances in detail, and Swiss law protects that knowledge in more than one place. Art. 321 of the Swiss Criminal Code covers auditors who are bound to confidentiality under the Code of Obligations, but it doesn't name fiduciaries in general. The Data Protection Act has an offence of its own: anyone who intentionally discloses secret personal data learned while practising a profession that requires knowledge of such data can be fined up to CHF 250'000, on complaint (Art. 62 FADP). On top of that come the confidentiality clauses in your engagement letters.

For an AI set-up this has a concrete consequence. You may hand processing to a provider only if no legal or contractual duty of secrecy forbids it, and you must make sure the provider can keep the data secure (Art. 9 FADP). So before client data goes anywhere, check the contract, where the data is processed and whether it's used for training, and write down what you decided. Our guide to where your data goes with AI tools lists the questions to ask. The law itself is on Fedlex. As of October 2026, and not legal advice.

How should a fiduciary firm start?

1. Pick one team or one mandate manager.A pilot with a clearly defined group of mandates tells you more than a firm-wide launch, and the people involved can judge the drafts from their own experience.
2. Sort four weeks of requests.Group them as above and mark what was urgent. That gives you your baseline and a first version of your rules.
3. Set up the document checklists.Start with private clients' tax returns, where the documents repeat every year.
4. Start before the busy season.Don't launch a pilot in the middle of tax return season. Start a few weeks earlier, so it has been tested by the time the volume arrives.
5. Measure.Response time, how many requests reach the right person first time, how many reminder rounds a mandate needs and how many hours your team spends on the inbox each week.

An example: in March a client forwards a tax assessment with the question “Is this right?”. The system recognises the assessment, matches it to the mandate, notes the date of receipt and puts it on the mandate manager's list with the 30-day objection period flagged. The client gets a short confirmation that the responsible person will review it. The system doesn't try to judge whether the assessment is right.

The fiduciary and accounting page shows how this fits together with searchable client knowledge and engagement quotes. A workflow audit shows which requests cost your firm the most time, and sorting and prioritising email explains the step that comes before automatic answers.