Readiness Checklist: How to Get Started with E‑Signatures Right Now

The lockdown and social distancing orders in place around the world have put unexpected pressure on financial institutions and other organizations to accelerate their digitization efforts. Suddenly, banks, mortgage lenders, credit unions, insurance carriers and others must find a way to digitize and offer their services remotely. The key is a secure, user-friendly, and enforceable electronic signature solution. Electronic signatures can help organizations continue to do business under these exceptional circumstances.

The biggest challenge is knowing where to begin. In this blog, we will cover the various implementation options as well as the top technical requirements to deploying electronic signatures in your organization.

Two E-Signature Implementation Options: User-initiated and Integrated

Determining how your organization will consume e-signatures is an important decision. E-Signature software is consumed broadly in two distinct ways: user-initiated or integrated.  

• User-initiated: Users can send and sign documents via the web portal, mobile app, or a third-party connector. This option is typically ideal for lower volume, user-initiated e-signature processes (i.e.: sales contracts, HR forms, expense reports, purchase orders, etc.).
• Integrated:If you’re looking to fully automate the e-signature process with your web application, business applications, core systems, and mobile apps, the integrated approach will fit your needs. In an integrated use case, there is no manual work for employees to prepare a document for e-signature – documents are system-generated and completely automated. This option is ideal for larger volume, system-initiated e-signature processes (i.e.: loan applications, account openings, insurance applications, etc.).

Both options provide operational efficiency, improve the customer experience, and reduce documents errors, but the two options also offer their own advantages. For example, a user-initiated process is much faster to deploy. The go-live timeline for a user-initiated process can be as short as a single day.

Alternatively, the integrated option removes any need for manual work preparing documents for signature. For example, an integrating e-signature process is beneficial to a financial institution that wants to enable prospective customers to complete account applications via its mobile app or banking website. Similarly, an insurance provider that needs to send pre-populated forms to its customers would also benefit from an integrated process. The integrated option will benefit organizations that processes thousands of forms that require e-signatures – significant cost savings will be realized by virtually eliminating all of the manual steps required to process a paper document.  

However, every organization has different needs, and different implementation options will benefit organizations differently. If you are unsure at this time, remember that organizations can transition from a user-initiated process into an integrated process at a later date.