OBSI’s Firm Portal gets positive reviews

OBSI launched its Firm Portal roughly a year ago. The portal allows OBSI’s 1,400+ participating firms to access case information, securely upload documents, renew their membership, and more. Designed to meet modern stakeholder expectations, our online portal makes it easier than ever for firms to work with us.

In late September 2020, we surveyed firms about the portal’s value. Almost 190 firms from across all industry sectors responded. We received the highest number of responses from the Exempt Market Dealers (EMD) and Portfolio Managers (PM), who represent almost three-quarters of participating firms and use the portal to renew their annual memberships.

Firm feedback points to portal’s value

Firms that have used the portal give it, on average, a rating of 8 out of 10 for ease of use. When asked how likely they would be to recommend the firm portal to a colleague, users responded, on average, with a rating of 7 out of 10. Firms explained that the reasons for their positive recommendations were because they find the portal to be user friendly and straightforward to use, as well as being a much faster, more convenient, and more secure way to communicate with OBSI about complaint files. The firms that told us they would not recommend it said that it was because the “right” people in their organization already have access to it.

Firm portal users told us that the features they value most about the portal are the ability to pay annual membership fees online and to access their invoice history on demand.

Recommendations for the future

Many firm portal users reported that they are satisfied with the firm portal and said no improvements are needed, but we also received some valuable suggestions for improvement. Based on these improvement suggestions, OBSI has made changes to the OBSI website to make the Firm Portal login link more accessible, and we will also be increasing the file upload size limit.