Month: July 2021

28
Jul
2021
How Does The Insurance Sector Benefit From Electronic Signatures?

How Does The Insurance Sector Benefit From Electronic Signatures?

What difference can a year make to the insurance industry? 2020 may be the answer. The ongoing pandemic transformed customer needs, habits, and expectations, stressing on overnight virtualization of operations.

Now, customers desire quicker transactions for insurance services. According to the PWC report, rising customer expectations are tipping the power balance in favour of the consumer.

The ripple impact of the switch is so strong that insurance businesses adopting a remote working model are struggling to adapt to these technological changes. It is directly impacting their brand name and customer service in the market.

To address these issues adequately, electronic signature technology has emerged as the strongest, fastest & safest option to approve insurance documents quickly.

Here is how the insurance sector benefits from electronic signatures:

1) Increase productivity of Insurance agents & employees

Electronic signature has become well known as a powerful technology to ease signing documents for clients, offering an impressive productivity boost for insurance agents and employees.

- You can adequately categorize and archive different types of insurance policies in digital format using this electronic method.

- You can send updates about the insurance deals status that helps reduce human error chances.

- You can track clients more quickly and efficiently, as every document that is signed, transmitted, opened, and read is handled from the eSignature dashboard.

- It ensures that insurance policies are not mixed, lost, or sent to the wrong address.

- Get more policy orders from customers, boosting productivity & business revenue.

- Automates insurance process flows and minimizes repetitive tasks.

2) Enhancing business efficiency

As paper or faxed insurance policy agreements are challenging to track, it isn’t easy to follow the steps of the clients in the process of signing documents. Different parts of the world are experiencing a lockdown, disrupting the document delivery methods and supply networks at all levels.

This situation makes it particularly difficult to track down actual insurance documents and the sudden absence of a critical stakeholder like the delivery partner can derail the entire process.

In this case, electronic signature technology allows for improved speed and transparency, allowing insurers to take action to move the process along by implementing reminder mechanisms or forwarding the documents to a new signing authority.

This mechanism saves precious time for the employees and the clients in follow-ups for document receipt acknowledgment, follow-ups for contract or agreement closure, thereby enhancing business efficiency.

3) Security Prioritization

As the insurance sector ventures into uncharted territory with digitalization, it is critical to guarantee sufficient checks and balances to ensure that the industry’s highly regulated norms are permanently adhered to and followed.

With so many data breaches hitting the insurance companies, there are so many questions to answer:

- How does the company handle the signed documents after receiving them from customers?

- How secure are the storage services used to store insurance documents?

It is pretty easy to tamper with paper-based documents, and even physical signatures get falsified easily.

Electronically signed papers route to high-tier data centers with SSL-encrypted endpoints and 256-bit AES encryption which are the most acceptable security measures to keep sensitive data safe at all times.

4) Mobility and speed in the signing of insurance policies

Customers can utilize an electronic signature to complete the entire onboarding procedure as fast as possible after acquiring a policy.

One of the most significant advantages of employing eSignatures in the insurance sector is that documental work is done from the comfort of one’s own home or anywhere globally using a computer, tablet, or smart device.

When the client has decided to purchase insurance policies, the electronic signature solution allows them to complete the documentation formalities and the related processes almost immediately without waiting for confirmation from the company’s end.

Customers’ confidence in utilizing eSignatures on the go grows as they sign insurance policies online.

5) Reduced spending on insurance paper policies

Research has estimated that 1.024 billion pieces of paper are required each year to deliver insurance policies and the cost to deliver these policies using paper is USD 703 Million.

Check out the savings to deliver insurance policies electronically:

- Reduce costs by up to 85%

- Cut more than 20 days off of delivery cycle times

- Reduce not-in-good-order policy delivery by 99%

Apart from that, an electronic signature results in significant savings in paper costs and other linked materials such as ink, scanners, and printers.

Furthermore, businesses that adopt paper-based processes create an image of being forward-thinking and environmentally conscious. These are the qualities that digital consumers highly value when evaluating service providers.

6) Improved insurance investment experience

Another significant advantage of electronic signatures in the insurance sector is that they assist in improving the insurance investment experience for clients.

Clients have gotten used to the older experiences of facing delays in taking insurance policies.

Digital signatures have given a magical transformation to the customer experience. You get instant verification and confirmation of purchased company policies, which serves as a differentiating element for world-class companies.

In addition to increasing the speed and efficiency of the policy signing procedure, it also reduces the danger of policyholders switching to another alternative carrier before the signature.

Case Study

Knight insurance group is a member of the Hankey Group of Firms, a financial services conglomerate centered in Los Angeles that consists of seven operating companies with 3,100 workers worldwide and $15 Billion in assets at the time of writing. It is a capital support provider and underwriting capability for casualty insurance programs and niche property. The group operates in six Midwest locations: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Toledo and Findlay, Ohio, Chicago, Illinois, and Indianapolis, Indiana.

In addition to delivering outstanding insurance products and financial services to people and businesses of all sizes, Knight Insurance Group has maintained its dedication to superior customer service.

Challenges

The Knight insurance group agents located at these six different locations were processing all paperwork manually. Their new clients took two weeks to fill out and return the applications. Because of this procedure, the likelihood of client churn grew, and administration times exceeded the desired time.

Solution

Following a thorough review of the process, Knight Insurance Group decided to investigate the possibility of digitizing the business processes. Following an inspection, the system administrator for the Knight Insurance Group began looking for alternative methods of completing the documentation. eSignature expedited the paperwork process, and after the research, they decided that eSignature was the most suited solution for such situations.

Benefits

  • Client forms that took two weeks to complete began arriving within one or two days, and they returned 75% of the documents within 24 hours of receipt.
  • Customers of Knight Insurance Group express high satisfaction with the ease, simplicity, and convenience of submitting papers by electronic signature.

Conclusion

An electronic signature massively benefits your insurance business. It moves you ahead of your competitors and prepares you to meet the needs and demands of the next generation.

eSignature solutions bring out the best in insurance companies that have adopted this technology. Sign up for a free eSignature account today.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
21
Jul
2021

Benefits of using Electronic Signatures in the Healthcare Industry

Do you know that physicians waste two-third of their time doing paperwork? In the last two years, it has become overwhelming for them with a swelling number of patients, understaffed medical facilities, and challenges in recording and storing their data.

A study has confirmed that the amount of paperwork that doctors have to do is out of control. Physicians spent 27% of their time seeing patients in their offices and 49.2% of their time on paperwork. Even when doctors were in the examination room with patients, they spent only 52.9% of their time conversing with or examining them and 37% on paperwork.

The data is only the tip of the iceberg. We also have to consider medical insurance forms, claims, and the time spent filling these forms.

This study shows that the amount of paperwork is getting insane and worse over time.

The healthcare industry faces many changes like government regulations, technological innovations, and patient expectations that pose new challenges to healthcare organizations in 2021. Some of which are cybersecurity, patient experience, invoicing & payment processing.

The industry deals with sensitive client data exchanges every day. It is imperative to ensure that all client data is collected accurately, and precautions are needed to eliminate tampering of the medical document by assuring its safe storage and security.

What if there is a technologically proven solution to eliminate paperwork and enable a paperless document workflow with uncrackable security & safety?

Welcome to electronic signature technology! Using an eSignature solution, healthcare providers can speed up the collection of the consent of the doctor and patient while maintaining a level of compliance that meets traditional signatures or exceeds them.

Here are the core benefits of using electronic signatures in the healthcare industry:

1) Focus on the patients rather than the paperwork

For a long time, doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers have complained about the time-consuming paperwork, which they say is a massive waste of time. They cannot see as many patients in a day and can’t spend much time focusing on improving their medical condition.

These are the top 4 specialties in the medical industry spending most of the time on paperwork:

  • Psychiatrists (20.3%)
  • General practitioners (17.3%)
  • Internists (17.3%)
  • Paediatricians (14.1%)

LunarPen application helps reduce paperwork for your health staff to increase the quality of care received by the patient and focus more on saving their lives.

Electronic signatures help capture and securely store all the end-to-end details of patients in a single application, starting from paperless:

  • Admission of patients
  • Doctor’s prescription
  • Progress report
  • Discharge of patient
  • Medical insurance claims
  • Hospital bills

2) Fast track crucial processes in healthcare

Most healthcare processes were a bit different decades ago. In 2021, most hospitals practice the same age-old methods that waste both the patients and healthcare time. The hospital administrator would hand out registration forms for filling and signing patient information. It is still happening to plan & confirm doctors’ appointments, which would eventually get processed manually by the staff.

When it comes to medical records, we use hand-written signatures on every medical document.

After some time, the older document gets destroyed because it is no longer needed.

Below is the existing lifecycle of documents without electronic signatures:

Print – Sign – Scan – Store – Destroy

Digital transformation empowers the industry to sign documents on any digital device anytime, from anywhere. Secure cloud storage is responsible for the storage, retrieval, and disposal of records.

New lifecycle of documents with electronic signatures:

Sign – Store

You can see the complete reduction in process steps with eSignatures that helps fast-track crucial processes in the healthcare industry.

That means the moment you sign the documents with digital signatures, they are stored securely in the cloud without the need of printing-signing-scanning-storing. It brings several benefits to the ailing patient and the overloaded healthcare personnel, which are:

  • Patients don’t have to carry their medical documents every time
  • Doctors can make important decisions about patients quickly
  • Save expenses related to printing, copying, scanning & document storage
  • Verify the authenticity of medical bills with ease
  • Tampering is impossible with online medical documents

3) Keep confidential patient data secure

Manual signatures have physical limitations, like they can be misplaced, copied, or damaged easily. They take longer to create, collect and store, making them easily prone to destruction, theft, and forgery.

Also, they fail to capture relevant information like the party’s intent to sign or the verifiable date and time of signing of agreements.

Electronic signatures successfully fill all the gaps left opened by manual signatures.

All critical documents are present on the eSignature application in digital format, assuring complete confidentiality of patient’s data against any attempts to steal it.

The eSignature application is accessible only by trusted healthcare professionals approved by the admin that keeps the data safe from unwanted sources. Additionally, the electronic signature technology uses multi-factor authentication to enhance security by requiring signers to express the intent to sign by utilizing the E-signature application.

There are several available options like secret Q&A, user id & password, uploading identification images, and many others for e-sign transactions.

Such security measures assure that only the permitted person can edit, access, and view the data.

4) Improve patient experience

Patients usually waiting in long lines, having little or no time to read forms carefully, and experiencing delays in getting access to doctor’s care are not the ingredients for a positive patient experience.

Digitizing documentation is the most effective method of eliminating the need for patients to be held up by paperwork. Every documentation is covered in electronic signature application, whether onboarding, discharge forms, or improving the efficiency of insurance claims processing.

Healthcare professionals and patients can read, accept and sign the forms from the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the remote capabilities of the application.

Furthermore, as the physicians are no longer required to do the tedious task of covering documentation, they can give much-needed time to the patients, which is a win-win situation for everyone.

5) Legal compliance

There are numerous laws to safeguard businesses using electronic signature applications and provide the required legal compliance to paperless signatures for a smooth user experience in every industry. Check out the details of these laws that assure legal cover to eSignatures:

eIDAS: eIDAS facilitates electronic transactions between citizens, enterprises, and the governments of any state of the Union. It ensures a market for trust services and legally protects the electronic signature based processes. The tremendous benefit of eIDAS is that it is permissible across all EU countries and can be used to open up additional EU markets for businesses.

HIPAA: Compliance with HIPAA can be helpful to your business. They are trusted more in the market since patients and clients believe you keep their data secure. Its primary benefit is profitability. Loyalty to customers results in greater profitability for your company. A majority of insurance companies and employers in the US sponsor or co-sponsor their employees’ health insurance.

ESIGN: The ESIGN Act helps expedite the use of electronic signatures in all places where federal laws apply. It ensures that eSignatures are permitted in the courts as credible evidence. Additionally, it makes sure that electronic documents have indisputable proof of validity, effect, and enforceability.

UETA: UETA provides a legal framework for electronic signature use per state. It is used to deal with everything from transferable records to automated transactions and record retention. 48 US states have adopted it.

Digital signature complies with the requirements of all the laws and assists organizations in meeting compliance requirements across the health industry. It covers health plans, medical equipment manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and providers by managing the signing process and ensuring that all information is authenticated and kept secure.

Case Study

Chupik Counseling has provided mental health services to central Texas patients for nearly three decades. Bread and butter for the therapists and counselors are therapy and counseling, offering evaluations, medication management, and additional services. In the year 2020, they opened five brick-and-mortar locations. During the severe global health crisis, their telehealth initiatives expanded rapidly.

Challenge

The CEO of the company, Jeffery Chupik, was a big believer in face-to-face therapy. Then in the year 2020, as the global pandemic struck, the entire world changed, shunning physical interactions and relying more on digital mediums for meetings.

It didn’t take long for staff to realize that they had no proper system to get patient consent for their telehealth services. They needed a solution to rapidly onboard new patients that didn’t rely on face-to-face meetings.

The Pain Point

Chupik required a rapid transition to telehealth to bring their onboarding and consent process online.

The Solution

Electronic signature made customer onboarding easier by including links to readymade onboarding document templates instead of PDF files. As the patient signs forms, their therapists automatically receive a digital copy of the patient with all the details.

Here are the features that clicked electronic signatures with Chupik:

Lightning-fast adoption

In a matter of a few hours, Chupik was able to get started with eSignatures. No complicated setup backed by quick and convenient signing.

Time-saving templates

It is easier to create templates easily for commonly used documents.

Conclusion

More efficient patient service is possible while maintaining compliance and standards by utilizing a digital eSignature solution. If you are a healthcare service provider and interested in using digital signatures to boost the efficiency of existing healthcare processes, please get in touch with us now.

Frequently Asked Questions

What documents could healthcare companies be signing?

Every document can be quickly converted into an online format using the readymade templates of electronic signatures. Healthcare companies can sign multiple documents like:

  • Patient intake form
  • Patient consent form
  • Care documents
  • Billing documents
  • Provider agreements
  • Claims processing forms
  • Drug prescriptions
  • Lab reports
  • Staffing forms
  • HIPAA forms

Are e signatures on medical forms and records legally enforceable?

Medical forms and records are among the documents that can be signed electronically, including prescriptions and medical records.

The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) and the Global and National Commerce Act (GNCA) must be taken into consideration when determining the conditions necessary for electronic signatures under HIPAA law (ESIGN Act).

Both the UETA and ESIGN establish that electronic signatures and forms have the same weight and legal effect as hand-written signatures and traditional paper documents, just as they do with hand-written signatures and conventional paper documents. A specific provision of the ESIGN Act specifies that the signed document’s legal enforceability cannot be denied in electronic format.

What are the requirements of e signatures under HIPAA?

Electronic signatures are not under HIPAA rule. They are acceptable if they are compliant with the ESIGN Act and the UETA Act.

The conditions of the UETA and ESIGN Act are:

Legal compliance: The contract, document, agreement, or authorization should comply with federal rules for e-signatures, must display the terms, and should offer the signatory the option to receive a printed or emailed copy of the contract.

User Authentication: For preventing disputes, the covered entities must implement a system to validate the identity of all parties in the contract. Two-step verification can solve this problem.

Message Integrity: It is necessary to implement a system to ensure the integrity of the agreement. This condition is similar to the HIPAA security requirements for electronic communications and therefore deserves the same level of importance.

Ownership and control: The requirement is to make e-signatures HIPAA-compliant to stored signed documents on servers of e-signature service providers.

How can eSignature technology be used in the healthcare industry?

Here are the other important uses of electronic signatures in the healthcare industry:

Customer documentation: Every patient has a file that keeps their documents intact. Often, patients need to sign the papers. Doctors can also eSign the documents during a patient’s checkup.

Approving medical procedures: All hospitals require consent from all patients before engaging in any process. It is necessary to prevent a patient from making a charge in court against the hospital.

The signing of medical certificates: A certificate issued by a medical professional verifies an individual’s ability and approval by the relevant healthcare provider. The medical profession can use eSignature solutions for healthcare signing of documents.

Medical receipts: An electronic signature is used instead of manual stamps to prevent faded or unclear stamps.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
02
Jul
2021

How e-Signatures Improve Business Efficiency

Every single company in the world is fighting hard for improving business efficiency in 2021. It’s about maximizing your output from given inputs and getting the most out of existing resources. Please take a look at some of the most successful companies in the world. They know how to optimize their available resources and extract maximum quality output from them.

A company can’t afford to be inefficient in a competitive market as it drastically increases the operating costs, impacting quality, output, and the company’s brand image. It is difficult to withstand market pressure and counter the demand-supply chain effectively. Unfortunately, inefficiency is a hard-hitting reality that is troubling companies every single business day, costing up to 30% of their revenue every year.

How to improve business efficiency?

A tested way is to make companies well organized and productive by introducing electronic signatures in their workflows.

Here is how electronic signatures improve business efficiency:

1) Limit interruptions in business

Interruptions are killing productivity at work. Forbes research says that around 71% of people report frequent interruptions during working hours. These unwanted interruptions are destroying their ability to stay creative and focussed.

Interruptions can be in various forms like:

  • Leaving your work and running to the clients to get their signatures
  • Continuous reminders & follow up with the clients to sign documents
  • Getting up from your work desk to print-scan-mail the document
  • Reminding other signees using calls, email to sign the document
  • Getting regular calls from your boss to confirm sales agreement
  • Lengthy follow up on emails to close the pending task
  • Long meetings to tackle & complete the stuck-up business process

Electronic signatures help limit interruptions in business by

  • Preparing documents online & eliminating the vicious cycle of printing-signing-mailing the documents
  • Document tracking feature enables you to track the signees as to which people have signed the form and who have still not signed it
  • eSignature apps allow you to send document notification to people who have not signed the form
  • Your standard business processes would not be stuck up due to your absence in the office, as the application is used remotely from any location.
  • Your busy clients don’t have to leave their physical locations to get the essential contracts signed, thereby saving companies’ time.
  • You can speedily sign and email the document simultaneously without any wait time.

2) Save time

Signing of physical documents can be a time taking process for most of the companies. A process takes three days on an average to capture a physical signature. Sometimes, it may take more than a week to complete the entire process of signing, scanning, and mailing the concerned documents.

There can be multiple reasons responsible for stretching the timelines to complete the process:

  • The concerned signee is not present in the office for signing documents
  • Office hardware like printers and scanner are not functioning well
  • The original document has been stolen, copied, or forged, forcing the process to start from scratch

When you use electronic signatures:

  • The average time to sign a form reduces from weeks to just 1-5 minutes.
  • You don’t have to wait for the physical presence of concerned employees as they can electronically sign a document using their smartphones from remote locations.
  • You don’t have to get up from your workspace & leave your prioritized job to do printing & scanning activities.
  • You avoid the chances of fraudulent activities that consume lots of business time as stored documents can’t be copied, scanned, and stolen.

3) Nullify risks associated with printing, scanning & copying of documents

There are multiple risks with paper documents during the process of printing, scanning & copying like:

  • Sometimes, a printed document is left in the paper tray where anyone from the office can copy it leading to a data breach
  • Staff members with access to confidential information can print, scan or copy the information freely
  • No automatic security alert is sent on printing, scanning, and copying any personal or confidential information
  • Anyone from the office can access the confidential documents stored in the memory of printing & scanning machines and send them to anyone
  • You can’t track printing, scanning, and copying activities associated with physical documents

Electronic signatures help tackle each of these risks very effectively in day to day business.

eSignature applications make use of cloud solutions to store highly confidential documents. Only concerned employees with access privileges can view, access and edit the contract or agreement. Every time there is an action on the document, a security notification updates all the respective stakeholders.

With eSignature at your service, you don’t have to worry about security risks and data leakage happening due to unauthorized activities.

4) Simplify your workflow

Paperwork is challenging to integrate into the business systems. Multiple steps need integration with the existing business processes. The physical documents need printing and scanning before you can use their details in regular business processes.

But with electronic signatures, you can use them without any further delay!

The reason behind this is that eSignatures simplify business systems that are already in use. You don’t have to prepare contracts or agreements manually, as eSignatures apps use ready-made templates to prepare contracts online.

When both parties sign the online contract on eSignature application, the signed agreement is stored securely on cloud solutions eliminating the need for printing, scanning & storage of documents.

When there is a need to retrieve the signed contract, you don’t need to find it from a massive pile of agreements. You only need to have the company’s approval to access the document stored in the cloud.

Such systematic business workflow ensures that business processes are quicker, speedier, and more secure, with no chances of manual error and document fraud.

Furthermore, eSignature makes the signing process more enjoyable by enabling faster signing between the parties and reducing drop rates of contracts/agreements.

That’s why employees & customers prefer digital signatures to pen and paper signatures as it is more user-friendly and contributes to a positive customer experience that helps attract more & more business.

5) Helps cut costs and increases company incomes

Digitization of business contracts and agreements lowers the storage space and the need for resources like paper, pen, courier costs, photocopies, etc., reducing overall costs by over 30%.

It also boosts company income by:

  • Speeding up client acquisition
  • Increasing contract & agreement signing rates
  • Increasing employee efficiency and productivity
  • Cutting unnecessary travel costs for client meetings
  • Requiring 80% less time for employee onboarding
  • Reducing the average length of sales cycle by a factor of 8 times
  • Eliminating hidden costs associated with human error

Digital signatures help increase cost-effectiveness, simplify the compliance process, and improve customer experience. Most importantly, the digitization of business empowers companies to tackle the threat of any competition at any time.

6) Boost remote work productivity

If we go by the physical workflow, employees get bombarded with repetitive, time-consuming tasks that eat up every spare second, profoundly affecting the focus and the right kind of thoughts to do the job smartly.

You got some excellent news with electronic signatures!

You can easily integrate this technology into existing business processes and see a quick boost in the employee and the organization’s productivity. Its time-saving features help streamline their business process to become easily adaptable and faster while offering an excellent experience for both the customers and the employees working remotely or from the office.

With an easy-to-use eSignature application like LunarPen, one can save nearly 40-50 hours per month by transforming the existing workflow and removing the need to print, scan and mail the document.

Conclusion

Want to improve business efficiency?

Electronic signatures are the safest way to eradicate interruptions in daily business operations, simplify daily workflow, cut costs and boost company productivity.

eSignature assures leaner turnaround time and excellent business efficiency as it removes the workflow obstructions and positively improves the customer experience of the application.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a valid e Signature?

In the ESIGN Act, an electronic signature is defined as “an electronic sound, symbol, or process attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.”

eSignatures refer to an electronic process that indicates acceptance of an agreement or record. They use various electronic authentication methods to verify the signer’s identity, such as password protection, corporate ID, email, or a PIN.

The proof of signing demonstrates via a secured process that includes an audit trail and a tamper-evident digital signature embedded into the esigned document.

How do I verify an electronic signature?

To verify whether a document or PDF is digitally signed and trusted successfully, the easiest thing is to open the signing panel in the Adobe reader for the document and check whether there is a green checkmark next to the signer’s signature.

The green tick shows that:

  • The signature is valid.
  • The document is un-modified since the application of signature
  • The signature includes an embedded time-stamp
  • Presence of signature details like last checked with details
  • Signer’s identity is valid
  • Signature is LTV enabled

What does signing electronically mean?

Electronically signing the documents means using a digital device to sign documents in electronic format. You can sign documents online using a smartphone, laptop, tablet, or using a mouse. It helps your business go paper-free and eliminate time-consuming activities like printing, scanning, and mailing documents.

Here is how you can use the LunarPen app to sign documents electronically

  • Create a document using ready-made templates
  • Upload online documents using Google cloud or Dropbox
  • Use the signed document sharing feature
  • Use the LunarPen interface to sign the document
  • Receive esigned documents by email

What is the best eSignature software?

LunarPen is the best eSignature software trusted by over 1 lakh professionals at leading companies.

Look at some of the exciting features of the LunarPen App:

High-level security: Signatures collected via eSignature apps are legal and secure. Each party confirms their identity via a secret code sent via SMS to sign.

Legally Binding: All signatures collected via LunarPen are compliant with EU norms and automatically generate a time-stamped proof-file to safeguard your agreements.

Integrate with 3rd party apps: Seamlessly connect your LunarPen account to popular cloud storage solutions like Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, or Evernote, and even sign documents right from within Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and the Google Chrome browser.

Sign documents from anywhere: No more printing, scanning, or faxing. An easy-to-use and fast signing experience, signing documents is a breeze from your phone and computer - whether at your desk or on the beach.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
01
Jul
2021

How Electronic Signatures Benefit the Finance Sector

Paperwork in the financial industry is unavoidable. Tons of paperwork everywhere, every day is a hard-hitting reality here. It is impossible to escape from it! Paperwork makes daily business operations complex as financial documents need printing, scanning and highly secure storage to protect confidential information like customer bank account details, signature, identity proof, self-attested applications, and more.

Competition in the sector is heating up due to the presence of financial companies with readily available, visible, and reachable products like SIP, mutual funds, stocks, fixed deposits, loan approvals, insurance, etc. Additionally, these companies have benefited from the extensive use of technology to expand their product penetration and market reach.

As the number of financial products in the market is rising with the increasing number of companies, so is the amount of paperwork for capturing customer details like interested customers, newly subscribed customers, daily transactions, and much more.

This increased paperwork is doing more harm than good to the industry.

The customer’s request for service activation on physical documents is used to verify user information on the application for starting the requested services. Unfortunately, this manual verification work has delayed the timely initiation of financial services for new and existing customers and made the waiting time for service initiation much longer.

Document security, increased paperwork, and inefficient business operations are vital factors troubling the finance sector in 2021.

For a long time, the industry seemed resistant to technological changes to end the paperwork. But now, modern financial institutions are incorporating new-age technologies like electronic signatures to stop paperwork, reduce service delays, enhance customer experience (CX) and keep them happy.

Here is how electronic signatures are playing a pivotal role in benefitting the finance sector.

1) Streamline client onboarding

Manual onboarding is often inconsistent and time-consuming. Electronic signatures are a vital step towards improving the onboarding experience. Financial institutions are increasingly replacing handwritten signatures with eSignatures as they allow clients to initiate and complete tasks digitally from the comfort of their homes at their own flexible time.

This flexible option in the form of an electronic signature saves the time and efforts of the customers. With electronic signatures, prospective customers can quickly fill an application and do the signature securely to become a customer in the streamlined process without further wait – all without stepping foot in the company office.

2) Make daily operations simpler

With eSigning, financial application processes are faster and less vulnerable to errors that need correction, such as customers leaving signatures at crucial places, incomplete applications resulting in more customer dropping-off during the application process.

Electronic signatures make operations of one of the highest in-demand financial products much simpler:

Account Opening: Account opening is much easier with electronic signatures. Applicants can sign their forms on eSignature apps and open an account from anywhere. Such swift and convenient processes make the companies extremely attractive for potential customers expecting fully automated processes right from signing the form to opening the account.

Loan applications: There is a considerable waiting period between loan applications and their acceptance. Electronic signatures help streamline in-person and online loan applications, drastically reducing the time for official approval of loans.

3) Get full benefits of a paperless organization

Finance companies eyeing to go paperless in the future can do it right away with the help of electronic signatures. Moreover, organizations using eSignature applications in the daily processes can experience some crucial benefits like:

Improved access: Electronic signatures allow you to find and access documents anytime from anywhere, from any device, allowing for smoother work completion, easier employee collaboration, document management, convenience, and drastic improvement in sales figures.

Faster business processes: There is no need for businesses to mail the document individually to the customers. Companies and individuals can exchange paperwork more efficiently, within seconds, in digital formats rather than waiting for documents to arrive by mail.

Secure your documents: Physical documents are prone to leakage during copying, printing, and scanning. Businesses using electronics can keep the paperwork secure with document encryption, cloud storage solutions, and encrypted browser connection (HTTPS), offering better visibility control and security to fend off threats for stealing or misusing the documents.

Cost Reduction: Electronic signatures save you a lot on office electricity bills (running printers & scanners), document storage costs (storing documents at physical locations), and stationary costs (Pen and paper costs).

Efficient organization: A paperless organization means getting freedom from the colossal clutter and mess of physical documents. Digitally stored documents are better organized for a faster, efficient, and headache-free organization.

4) Ensure top benefits for financial institutions

Business organizations achieve excellent benefits after using electronic signatures that are bothering them for decades:

Cut scanning errors: eSignatures reduce scanning errors by up to 92% in financial institutions.

Achieve audit efficiency: You can be 100% assured about documents signed using electronic signatures due to the audit trail feature that helps track each & every change to the record made by users accessing the documents.

Reduce missing files: There are negligible chances of missing files with electronic signatures. That is because signed documents in electronic formats are stored in cloud storage solutions that can be retrieved anytime by authorized users.

5) Achieve excellent business efficiency

Electronic signatures have helped fast track and optimize the workflow of millions of businesses to maximize target sales numbers and give a quantum boost to business revenue.

Here are some of the proven achievements of eSignatures positively affecting business efficiency:

  • 40% reduction in time spent by customers to view and sign the documents
  • There is an 80% average reduction in turnaround time using electronic signatures
  • There is an 80% average error reduction in daily business processes
  • Businesses have improved overall productivity by up to 85%
  • Assured average cost savings of USD 20 per document
  • Companies observed a 500% increase in customer loyalty
  • Organizations can save 22,000 business hours annually
  • Companies using eSignature tools can cut down document handling costs by 85%
  • eSignature reduces scanning errors by up to 92% in financial institutions
  • eSignature implementation prevents file loss by up to 60% in financial institutions
  • Businesses achieve 70%-80% efficiency improvements after removal of manual processes
  • Companies that go paperless reduce processing errors by an average of 90%

6) Improves customer satisfaction

eSignatures make transactions easier on the client-side as they can sign and send the document without the hassles of printing & mailing from their laptop or smartphone at their own preferred time.

Customer satisfaction with the overall transaction process increases due to the convenience of signing documents from their secure remote location, with no chances of the electronically signed document getting leaked to fraudulent sources.

Signing any document is super easy with LunarPen. You have to draw the signature using the mouse, touch screen, typing their name, or uploading an image of the signature.

Clients do not have to pay the bills for sending the documents by mail, nor have they to spend on travel (local, national or international) to complete the signing of documents.

Digital signatures make the whole process easier, faster, less expensive, and more convenient.

LunarPen’s eSignature seamlessly integrates with the financial process as it reduces the steps in the business process rather than deleting it.

It is precisely what the customers expect from a business– speed, security, simplicity, transparent process, and quality service, vital ingredients in improving customer satisfaction in financial institutions.

7) Increases security and safety of documents

Numerous cases happen every day when the applied documents submitted by customers to avail services are lost in a massive pile of papers, or the document information is tampered with or leaked from the office.

Not only that, these physical documents need significant resources to store and keep them safe.

However, documents signed with the LunarPen application have meagre chances of being accessed by unauthorized persons. That’s because LunarPen eSignature apps are backed by robust features like user authentication, audit trail, and cloud security.

Furthermore, it is easy to keep electronically signed documents safe rather than storing them at designated physical storage. As a result, it helps businesses save huge document storage costs and incorporate more flexibility in daily operations.

Case Study

CI Assante is a wealth management firm supported by over 800 professional advisors responsible for managing over USD 40 Billion for individuals and families nationwide. They have a knack for intelligent risk management and help Canadians grow wealth and secure their financial future.

Challenge

Assante had several offices operating across Ontario, due to which moving paperwork across the branches was an everyday challenge for this firm. Each financial advisor had to sign more than 15-20 documents every week, including KYC documents and opening accounts. Not only that, those signed documents needed to be signed by the branch managers located at different locations on different days.

The Pain Point

  • Collecting manual signatures from different branches is a prolonged process
  • All documents needed signature within a time of 48 hours.
  • Client documents routinely needed a signature from people in different locations.

What happened if the documents were not signed within 48 hours?

Assante’s head office freezes the client accounts, due to which no transactions are done until the paperwork is completed with all the pending signatures.

Solution

Assante has gifted itself the most needed resource globally - time and money by switching to electronic signatures.

Cut Costs: Reduced expenditure on office equipment like a pen, paper, printers, and scanners, leading to the quick turnaround time of documents needing signatures. In addition, it assured fewer account restrictions and a smoother client onboarding.

Get signatures from anyone, anywhere: As signers were located in different cities on different schedules, adopting a digital document workflow made the daily work immensely easier for them. Now they can sign documents from anywhere, anytime, without receiving a reminder from the company.

Slash turnaround time & avoid account freeze: Client onboarding required the lengthy process of mailing the document to the administrator and printing it for everybody’s signature. It required a lot of running to meet the 48-hour deadline and the risks of freezing new accounts.

The onboarding documents can be directly scanned and sent to all the parties for eSignature before the deadline. The result was fewer account freezes and happy customers.

Enjoy significant savings: Adopting electronic signatures in their workflow helped Assante transform into a paperless company. Not only did they save huge on paper, but the adoption also helped their team save a whole lot of money on paper printing as well as ink and toner costs.

Conclusion

It is the right time for the finance sector to adopt eSignature technology, which is necessary to create a positive customer experience. eSigning documents is an absolute necessity in today’s times. If you are not offering remote signing of documents for different products of the finance sector, potential customers will leave you and find someone who is offering these benefits.

Wait no more! Let your business quickly avail of the benefits of electronic signature. Sign up free to open a LunarPen account and start eSigning the documents from today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the drivers of the e Signature market?

e Signatures are helping organizations speed up business processes and achieve excellent business efficiency for almost three decades. It becomes challenging for businesses to meet deadlines due to lengthy paperwork that can be countered by digitizing the documents to sign them electronically, which is a far more efficient method than the pen and paper method.

eSignatures can provide significant efficiencies in assisting businesses of any size to eliminate paperwork bottlenecks for the organization’s progress.

Here are the leading drivers for the adoption of electronic signatures:

Reason 1: Customer expectation for digital adoption

Reason 2: Increased awareness of legal acceptance of e-signatures

Reason 3: To remain competitive & relevant in the market

Reason 4: Greater focus on compliance & security

Reason 5: Growth of mobile device use

When can electronic signatures be used?

One of the most critical elements of electronic signature validity is the signing party’s intent to be bound like a traditionally signed contract. Apart from these, one must keep these requirements in mind when considering the legal validity of electronic signatures:

  • Both the parties must have consent to use the electronic signature to sign the document.
  • The eSignature application must record the process by which the electronic version of the signature was created.
  • Records of the electronic signature must be retained and available for immediate reproduction.

What are the benefits of using eSignatures?

One small but powerful application like eSignature gives multiple benefits to organizations:

  • Intuitive and straightforward to use
  • Remote access and improved user convenience
  • It offers more security than traditional paper documents
  • Convenient solution than the alternative of mailing, printing & scanning
  • Faster turnaround gives businesses greater versatility in time-sensitive situations
  • More cost-effective than traditional pen and paper methods
  • Low consumption of time as the document is signed online instantly
  • You don’t have to spend money on paper & ink as there is no paperwork involved
  • Give real-time access of documents to clients for signature from anywhere
  • Access to centralized document storage assures you don’t have to search documents
  • Increase collaboration from multiple parties and keep projects moving ahead
  • Easily track who has opened, signed, and approved the document

Why do I need a eSignature for my bank?

Digital signature usage in banks improves customer satisfaction by offering them to complete their tasks quickly, efficiently, and safely. In addition, it makes customers think that the banks care for them, thereby increasing customer loyalty and boosting word-of-mouth marketing.

These are the primary purpose of the adoption of digital signature in banks:

  • Increased transparency & efficiency
  • Strengthen their brand image
  • Centralization of documents
  • Helps fight fraud
  • Saves annual expenses
  • Time savings
Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
01
Jul
2021

How Using Electronic Signatures Helps Your Sales Team

2021 is the year of sales transformation and a critical factor in determining how businesses would grow in the coming years. B2B buyers and sellers have gone digital due to the massive digital transformation. What we thought of as a crisis response has become the current norm in the last two years. One thing is sure that the gigantic digital shift is here to stay and will continue to drive businesses in a safer, speedier & structured way.

B2B sales can adapt to any challenging environment and have not let us down in this tough situation. Crucial research from Mckinsey says that buyers & sellers prefer digital self-serve and remote human engagements over face-to-face interactions. It has made it easier for buyers to place orders, get information, arrange service and enjoy the speed and convenience of services.

If you observe the market situation, all manual processes & business activities have shifted digitally. We are keeping a complete ban on field visits, client meetings and lively discussions.

So, how do the sales team sign contracts and agreements with new businesses in 2021?

Introducing electronic signatures - one of the most gifted digital era technologies empowering your sales team to safely, securely, and speedily sign confidential documents.

Electronic signatures and digital signatures are increasingly replacing traditional methods of signing and authenticating documents.

What makes them safer for businesses is that for more than a decade, electronic signature laws have legalized and broadened the scope of eSignatures to facilitate more straightforward agreements, collaborations and business transactions of national & International importance.

Here is how using electronic signatures helps your sales team:

1) Boost Key Result Areas (KRAs) of your Sales team

Are you worried about your sales team’s performance? The pandemic is driving every sales team crazy as they are constantly worried about meeting their allocated sales targets.

There are endless questions to ponder upon by a sales guy:

  • How do we persuade the clients to sign up for the documents?
  • How to achieve sales targets in challenging situations like lockdown?
  • How to increase the market share of the company’s products & services?
  • How to build superb trust, rapport & credibility with sales prospects?
  • How to close every sale confidently?

Think no more! Electronic signatures are a win-win solution for any company’s sales team designed to perform in any challenging situation.

Sales teams can effectively use eSignatures to sign business contracts or agreements speedily. As a result, they do not have to depend on physical visits to the clients for follow-ups regarding contract/agreement closure.

The contractual agreement converts into electronic format, and its online copy is instantly available to the client for eSignature in a single click. Additionally, live notifications on the eSignature app ensure that you stay updated about the esigned status of the documents.

Sales team utilizing eSignature applications can score 100% in their KRAs and close sales more confidently by

  • Emerging as the undisputed sales champion of their sales territory as the client would sign contracts with your company only due to the excellent Customer Experience (CX) in the form of eSignature solutions
  • The sales team can close more contracts on the spot due to the ultimate benefit of multiple deals getting signed within a few seconds.
  • Building an excellent relationship with the clients with this latest technological marvel helps them sign contracts without travelling and that too at blazing fast speed.
  • Electronic signatures help gain market share by signing more contracts speedily than the competition’s sales team.

2) Electronically sign multiple Sales documents

Electronic signatures sign every possible sales document embedded in the business process. Here are the examples of documents that are signed electronically:

  • Non-disclosure agreements
  • Financial agreements
  • Sales quotes
  • Proposal and bids
  • Sales orders
  • Customer agreements
  • Sales receipts
  • Delivery orders
  • Invoices

3) Lightning-Fast invoicing

The processing speed of an invoice depends on the information synchronization between the sales and finance team.

Let’s talk about a situation where the sales team has billed the ‘X’ amount in the invoice, but the finance end shows some difference in the quoted figures.

The error may have happened due to manual mistakes at the sales end or the finance team going ahead with incorrect information. The tussle between the teams can cause an unprecedented delay in the processing of an invoice. Unfortunately, the only way to solve this issue is to do a data reconciliation, which can be highly time-consuming.

eSignature applications help in e-invoicing by making the electronically signed contracts available directly to the finance team. In addition, it eliminates any manual errors as the finance team has all the relevant available information to invoice your clients.

As sales commissions and bonuses ride on accurate reporting, electronic signatures ensure that both the sales and finance team have all the correct data to process invoices at the right time without further delays.

4) Improved productivity of the Sales team

Vital research states that Salespeople spend one-third of their day talking to prospects. In addition, they spend 21% of the day emailing, 17% on entering information, 17% on further researching and prospecting, and 12% on internal meetings and 12% on scheduling calls.

The traditional document signing process that helps close the final deal can take uncountable hours of calls, meetings, follow-ups, writing proposals, revising proposals, emails, filing documents, convincing the clients, etc.

It can lead to colossal burnout and a drastic reduction in employee productivity. So, you need to ensure that you empower your sales team with the tool to cut down the hours spent on mundane tasks.

Using an electronic signature online significantly reduces any manual efforts.

Salespeople using electronic signatures have a lot of free productive time for finding new opportunities, nurturing leads, building customer relationships, and generating new leads.

5) Close deals on the spot

Signing contractual documents with a pen is a thing of the past as it is an extremely lengthy process. Nowadays, clients want to close deals speedily and laser focus on their business in 2021.

Suppose you are still using handwritten signatures for closing the agreements. In that case, the decision-making teams from both the parties need to be present at a common destination, and every detail of the deal would need advanced planning like:

  • Agreement venue
  • Travel arrangements
  • Identification proofs
  • Stamp of both the parties

You don’t have such a constraint with digital signatures!

The contractual document is prepared online and available for counter-signature on the eSignature application. Therefore, there is a negligible waiting period for electronically signing the contracts, which needs only a few seconds.

eSignatures are easy to use, completely legal & backed by electronic laws worldwide. They are available for users from any remote location on any digital device. It empowers the sales team to shorten the lengthy agreement cycle and close deals with the qualified leads right on the spot.

6) Reduce Turnaround Time (TAT)

There are multiple reasons for insufficient turnaround time in business

  • Presence of too many manual processes
  • Lack of business planning & execution
  • A great deal of human intervention
  • Lack of clear communication

These pointers are responsible for delays in completing the contract/agreement in time. Your business clients expect to start the deal quickly. If you take too long to respond, you are less likely to earn their respect as well as the repeat business, forget about making word-of-mouth recommendations or business references, that are highly recommended in increasing your market reach and boosting the sale figures.

All documents can be signed online using electronic signatures, reducing the turnaround time by more than 80%.

It means the moment your client signs a document with your company. Then, you can send it to the next party for their eSignature. That too without any waiting time for printing, scanning and mailing the signed document. As a result, the company can quickly start giving services to the concerned client for which the deal was signed and build a positive brand image in the market.

Conclusion

Are you still using pen and paper for signing your sales contracts? Think again! You can also transform your sales process today and integrate electronic signatures to boost your revenue, even if you have a small sales team. Start eSigning your documents today!

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments