In the world of Financial Services Cloud (FSC), client relationships often extend far beyond immediate family members within a single household. Clients may work with lawyers, accountants, business partners, or other professionals whose roles are just as critical to their financial lives. To capture these broader connections, FSC provides the ability to create Contact-to-Contact Relationships with Reciprocal Roles. Reciprocal roles ensure that when one relationship is defined—such as a lawyer to a client—the system automatically creates the corresponding reverse relationship, like client to lawyer.
This functionality not only saves time but also helps advisors maintain an accurate and holistic view of each client’s extended network. Out of the box, FSC includes a wide range of reciprocal roles like lawyer/client, accountant/client, parent/dependent, and business/proprietor, but administrators can easily extend this feature by adding new custom roles to fit unique business needs. In this blog, we’ll explore how to create a Contact-Contact Relationship with reciprocal roles, using a real-world example of associating a lawyer with a client, and show how this relationship automatically updates on both contact records.
Create a Contact-Contact Relationship with a Reciprocal Role
Groups or Households sometimes have relationships with people who don’t live in the same household. For example, Tim Roberts has a lawyer named Ivan M. Kohl. Financial Services Cloud provides several reciprocal roles, including lawyer/client, accountant/client, parent/dependent, business/proprietor, and more. If those roles don’t cover your business needs, it’s easy to add new roles.
Let’s see how Reciprocal Role works when we create a relationship for Vivian’s lawyer, Ivan.
- In the Accounts view for the Torres Household, click the Relationships Tab.
- Under Related Contacts, click +Add Contact (the contact is filled with Vivian Torres).
- Click Related Contact and choose Ivan M Kohl.
- Click Related Role and type Lawyer.
- Select Lawyer and Save the new Contact-Contact relationship.
Ivan M. Kohl is now listed on the Torres Household Relationship Tab as the lawyer.
Now look at the Reciprocal Role functionality on the lawyers Contact record page related list. We should see Vivian as a client as well as Rachel Adams.
Summary
Contact-to-Contact Relationships with Reciprocal Roles in Financial Services Cloud enable advisors to capture and visualize the broader network of connections that influence a client’s financial life. By automatically generating reverse roles—such as client when lawyer is selected—FSC ensures that relationships remain accurate and consistent across records. This functionality supports stronger client engagement by giving advisors a complete view of both personal and professional connections. With flexibility to use predefined roles or create custom ones, organizations can tailor the feature to their specific business processes, making reciprocal roles a powerful tool for managing complex client relationships.