Onboarding Friction for Mid-Tier Prop Shops – Anyone Else Seeing This?

We're currently expanding our network of prop firm relationships, looking for increased capital allocation and diversification. What's increasingly evident is the significant disparity in onboarding efficiency once you move beyond the absolute top-tier, household names. It's not just the KYC/AML side, which is understandable to a degree, but the sheer lack of streamlined processes for basic account setup and integration.

Specifically, we're encountering issues with firms that seem to still operate with paper forms, manual reviews for every single document, and a general disconnect between their front-end sales pitch and the back-end operations. This isn't just a minor annoyance; it translates directly into opportunity cost when capital is sitting idle for weeks. It also makes assessing liquidity provision and payout reliability harder when the initial operational handshake is so clunky.

Has anyone found a reliable way to vet a prop firm's operational backbone before committing to weeks of documentation back-and-forth? Are there specific questions or red flags you look for regarding their tech stack or internal processes during initial conversations? It feels like some of these firms are still living in 2005 when it comes to infrastructure, despite offering competitive terms on paper.