eSignaure Law

06
May
2021

Industries That Can Benefit From eSignature Solutions

Moving fast in business is crucial for survival! You move slowly, and the rising competition devours your market share. eSignature solutions help companies to minimize delays with paperwork and move things faster. They cut the turnaround time by 90%, which means a document can be signed and shared online even before the ink dries on the paper. Apart from these benefits, they allow businesses to work smartly, save money, boost productivity without using the costly, time-consuming age-old processes.

Investment in eSignature service is the best bet for organizations that want to blast past these issues and speed up their digital transformation journey.

Here are the industries that can benefit immensely from eSignature solutions.

eCommerce Industry

Is there anything familiar between eCommerce and electronic signatures? Both have closer ties with each other and are dependent on the internet for smooth business operations.

The sole credit of the eCommerce industry getting into a monstrous growth phase (USD 4.28 Trillion worldwide), breaking national boundaries, and reaching genuine customers goes to electronic signature solutions.

eSignatures have entirely changed the way eCommerce companies do business with customers.

Here is how they complement each other!

Every order on an eCommerce website is like an online business contract initiated when the buyer places an order. The open contract is closed when the buyer acknowledges the product receipt with an electronic signature.

The plan of using an eSignature application is evident here.

Its use means genuine company representatives are delivering the ordered product on behalf of the company, and there are minimal chances of the order getting duplicated and misplaced.

Another critical point is that if a business is present in other geographical locations, the company needs not seek the customer’s signature on a physical document as consent to the contract. When you esign the document using an eSignature solution, you can instantly use it as an agreement signed by both parties.

You are miles ahead of the competition in a tough eCommerce market as your customers get the impression that they are doing business with a trusted company.

This way, eSignatures provide a critical way to boost online branding, gain positive word-of-mouth marketing, and enhance Customer Experience (CX).

Banking Industry

Implementing eSignatures in the banking industry can save an astonishing 1.3 hours per transaction! As they are efficient and track documents very fast.

Banks adopt eSignature solutions in daily business operations to offer a better customer experience and digitize their processes.

Here are some ways banks can benefit from using e-signatures:

Minimize transaction time: It allows banks to process a good number of transactions within a short period

Ensures document security: If your bank uses esignature solutions, you don’t have to worry as esigned documents are stored securely in the cloud storage.

Streamline Internal process: Banks can eliminate all time-consuming steps involved in paperwork as you don’t have to print, scan and mail the documents.

Improved customer loyalty: eSignature solutions give clarity, transparency & excellent efficiency in a bank’s internal processes allowing customers to reach them for more services, thereby improving customer loyalty.

Telecommunication Industry

If an industry has truly capitalized and received immense competitive benefits from electronic signature, then the credit goes to the telecommunication industry.

When the world embraced 4G technology, they needed to acquire customers in mass numbers to justify the infrastructure costs.

But the biggest Achilles heel of this industry was manual document processing as companies received connection requests from lakhs & lakhs of applicants every day. Activating these connections in a few hours and providing them the selected services at the right time was like daydreaming.

Then the telecom industry adopted eSignature technology, which completely changed the scene. Here is how it has benefitted from electronic signatures:

Fastest Customer Acquisition: Process KYC documents in a matter of minutes instead of days.

Pleasant Customer experience: What is more pleasing than seeing your applied services getting activated before your own eyes? You apply for a sim today and enjoy voice and internet services the same day.

Contract Signups and renewals: B2B customers sign their contract online on a paperless document with real-time approvals on contract and eForms.

Tamper-proof documents: Digital signatures are tamper-proof as they use highly secured encryption technology.

Ensures compliance: Electronic signature confirms to ESIGN, eIDAS and IT signature act making it suitable for intercontinental business.

Here is a live example of Reliance Jio using electronic signatures to acquire 20 Million customers in a month.

Insurance Industry

Insurance is the second industry after telecommunication searching for new customers to add to its business. The more customers, the greater is the month-on-month revenue.

But the main challenges faced by them are reducing costs, increasing turnaround, and profitability.

To overcome these challenges and remain relevant in the market, these companies have started deploying electronic signatures as a proven solution to acquire online customers securely, build engagement and grow customer loyalty.

The benefits of implementing eSignature for the insurance industry are:

  • Sign new/existing insurance policies with speed and accuracy
  • Super convenient for clients as they can quickly sign and retain copies of their signed policies
  • Get new customers with ease leading to more significant improvement in productivity of field agents
  • Reduce chances of errors by securing your insurance document flow
  • Get a considerable return on investment (ROI) by saving paper, mailing costs, and back-office processing
  • Boosts up brand image in the market as an eco-friendly company
  • One of the most significant benefits of eSignature is that it helps reveal the identify the signer
  • It helps save your office space as you don’t need printing and scanning machines

Construction Industry

Do you know that the global construction market would grow to USD 8 Trillion by 2030? There is an incredible opportunity to be a part of this boom and climb the ladders of success.

The construction industry has tonnes of paperwork- contracts, material sourcing, paid bills, unpaid bills, builder-customer agreements, employee records, bank agreements, construction project management, and a lot more.

According to a recent study by the World Economic Forum (WEF), full-scale digitalization within ten years is capable of producing annual global cost savings of USD 0.7-1.2 Trillion (13-21%) on Engineering & Construction and USD 0.3-0.5 Trillion (10-17%) in the Operations phase.

Electronic Signatures are an essential weapon in swiftly ensuring the digital shift.

You can barely escape from paperwork! Whether the construction company is a smaller company or a larger company, contracts and agreements form part of everyday work. The most important thing is to keep all the records safe for years & years, preventing them from misuse and getting destroyed.

LunarPen eSignature applications are born to handle these situations pretty well.

Here is how LunarPen eSignature helps the construction industry:

  • Stores all documents in one place and keeps construction industry contracts completely secure
  • Eliminates the risk of construction project delays by getting required signatures from engineers, managers, and contractors
  • Process construction company documents in the most efficient way by uploading, eSigning, and emailing the documents
  • Prevents forgery of essential documents and contracts as online documents are accessible only to authorized users

Law Firms Industry

The law firm industry is worth USD 300 Billion a year. It provides expertise on various practices, including business law, criminal law, commercial law, tax law, intellectual property, and real estate.

It involves loads of paperwork hassles that are always a pain and needs due care for document creation, usage, security, and storage.

Paperless electronically signed documents simplify the process of document signing and increase document safety.

Here are the main benefits of electronic signature in the law firm industry:

Time Management: LunarPen eSignature application saves a lot of time doing manual tasks like printing, scanning, mailing, and storing the documents.

Cost savings: It considerably reduces the amount of paper needed for printing, scanning, copying, and mailing documents.

Security: It offers the highest level of protection than a paper contract due to encryption technology, allowing verification of every signer and maintaining the chain of custody.

Client conversion rate: It allows to increase the conversion rate for retaining new clients by signing with the organization immediately at the first intake.

Use from anywhere: Your clients won’t have to take work off to come in and sign documents that are essential to their matters. They go to their email and can review and sign their documents quickly.

Protects confidential documents: It helps protect personal information with secure electronic storage. Your clients will love how fast and easy it is to sign documents with eSignatures.

Legally Enforceable: Electronic signatures used for signing online documents are legally enforceable by law.

Conclusion

The growing list of companies and industrial sectors using eSignature solutions is undeniable proof of its adoption in day-to-day business operations. Take the name of any industry, and you can see the way companies are using this technology to speed up business processes, boost productivity and win consumer confidence. Electronic signatures are a dream come true for companies trying to reduce operational costs and increase market share without constraint on a company’s existing resources.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the three benefits of a digital signature?

The three main benefits of using electronic signatures are enhanced security, lower transaction costs, and speed.

What is an eSignature example?

Examples of electronic signatures are

  • Using an ePen to create a signature on a touch screen device,
  • Using your fingers to draw your signature on smartphone or tablets
  • Using the mouse to remove your name as a signature on desktop or laptop
  • Signature at the bottom of your email
  • Typing your name as a signature
  • Scanned images of a signature

Is email an electronic signature?

The components of an electronic signature are

  • Your name
  • Name of company
  • Role in the company
  • Contact details
  • Website URL of the company
  • Your photo or a company logo

What is the symbol for electronic signature?

An S-signature is an electronic signature formed by forwarding slashes that include any non-handwritten signature (i.e., electronic or mechanical).

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

Why e-Signatures Should Be a Part of Your Digital Transformation

Do you know that the global spending on digital transformation will exceed 2.4 Trillion USD by 2024, making it the number one priority for a company’s IT initiatives in the world?

Companies’ efforts to transform digitally have begun, and by 2023 the digitally transformed organizations are expected to contribute to more than half of global GDP.

But important research shows that only 8% of the global companies have achieved their targeted business outcomes from their investment in digital technology. It means over 90% of companies still struggle to live up to the promise of a technological business model.

So, why is it that a large number of companies are failing to transform digitally?

Incorrect goals, lack of clear strategy, and failure to adapt to new changes are crucial reasons for its failure.

What is Digital Transformation?

Is this only about getting rid of physical paperwork and documentation?

Digital Transformation is the process of integrating digital technology into crucial business areas to optimize its speed, security, and reliability, thereby completely changing the way you do business and deliver values to the customer.

A digital transformation strategy is a key to help a company grow and provides an excellent opportunity for core business functions like marketing, human resource, and finance to move away from traditional processes, automate these areas, enabling leaders to focus on broader business opportunities.

One of the critical elements that must be part of the transformation is eSignatures.

However, in 2021, still, esignatures are not widely used in different industrial sectors despite numerous benefits like cost savings, time savings, productivity boost, and overall customer experience.

One good news for you, the current pandemic is forcing small, medium, and extensive business organizations to digitize their process and maintain an online business presence in the market.

These are the top reasons why eSignatures should be a part of your digital transformation:

  • Improves User Experience:

The pandemic led to the unexpected closure of a large number of private and public companies. Collaborations, agreements, signatures, and multiple manual processes came to a grinding halt. After a hiatus of more than a year, businesses had tons of pending paperwork, unclosed requests, and incomplete processes.

eSignature removes the excess load from your work by transforming physical processes (Print-Sign-Scan-Mail) into digital processes (Create-eSign-Email) without any dependency on manual paperwork.

Digital processes followed by eSignature do not depend on the physical availability of a person to print, sign and mail the documents. You can electronically sign online documents on secure cloud storage solutions on your own trusted device from anywhere. Organizations adopting eSignature in their daily business processes have complete peace of mind as there are no chances of pending paperwork getting stuck in the absence of office closure. It has helped improve the user experience as it allows businesses to continue operations with ease and gives a competitive edge over other players in the market.

  • Empowers people to work in new ways

Employees using eSignature applications do not need an office presence to execute crucial business processes. It keeps moving your business forward regardless of your company in any part of the world.

Here are the examples of how professionals in different industries have left old ways and adopted new working habits using eSignature solutions.

Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Doctors don’t have to depend on physical documents to hand over prescriptions and sign patient records and other documents. Increased use of electronic signatures has helped doctors prepare and share prescriptions digitally, reducing huge paper loss, theft, and tampering. Now healthcare can be speedily delivered to patients with faster document approvals, faster document sending, and faster document receiving.

Digital Transformation in Insurance: Customers can sign the necessary documents, anytime and anywhere in seconds, to get insurance policies. After customers choose to buy a policy, they can use an electronic signature to complete the process quickly. The procedure can be done with any digital device almost immediately from home or anywhere else.

Digital Transformation in Banking: With e-signatures, employees and consultants spend more time developing customer connections and less time doing business. Earlier, it took so much time printing & filling KYC forms, entering information, copying, and then scanning the image or documents back into digital format. Electronic signatures have freed bankers and employees to talk with customers and give them the needed value.

  • Complete User Control

No technology in the world gives the customer more power to check

  • Who VIEWS the document?
  • Who EDITS the document?
  • Who SIGNS the document?

There are numerous policy guidelines for the use of eSignatures.

  • The organization must provide a detailed and up-to-date statement of all requirements to the user.
  • The second rule is to inform the user that they have the right to withdraw their consent at any time.
  • The third one is that the consumer will face no legal or financial consequences.

These guidelines provide the user with more control and protect them against coercion. The use of eSignatures helps your users to know that they care about their best interests. It promotes excellent communication and interaction between the company and the customers, which is an important way of gaining feedback.

  • Saves time

By using the LunarPen platform, organizations can complete approvals and agreements in hours instead of days. It helps avoid all the time wastage and the manual work done to prepare, approve, print, and sign the documents as they can be created, edited, and stored online securely on cloud applications accessible only by authorized users.

Companies using LunarPen can track the status of signed documents putting an end to these questions:

  • Where are the documents?
  • Who has not signed the documents?
  • Why have they not signed the documents?

So, no more wastage of valuable business hours if

  • Your office is closed
  • Signer is absent due to leave
  • Printing/Scanning machines not working
  • Desktops/Laptops have crashed

Professionally, this is what organizations want – save significant time in daily business operations and serves clients quickly without any delay as time is money.

The most significant benefit of digital transformation is helping companies meet their business deadlines and serve their customers at lightning speed.

  • Improvement in Employee productivity

E-signatures boost productivity by empowering sales and simplifying operations. According to the Forrester study, signing onboarding documents online would save a typical organization 49,000 worker hours over three years and 2.5 hours per new hire.

Now an employee can work peacefully on a project without distractions as there are little chances of him leaving the current work and searching old project documents from a massive pile of paper.

Here is how eSignatures improve employee productivity:

  • Employees don’t lose time due to document collaboration issues
  • Helps in streamlining workflows to execute processes quickly
  • Uses new age storage methods to optimize productivity levels
  • Get eSignatures from the right parties on time
  • It helps achieve your aim of a paperless office
  • Improves online collaboration of employees
  • Ensures working on a project with complete focus

  • Top Security

According to a recent study, the digital signature market is expected to grow by USD 2.77 Billion between 2020-2024, at a CAGR of 27 percent during the forecast period. It means that in a few years, a large number of professionals will use esignatures for online business transactions questioning digital signature security.

Security is the biggest barrier in adopting digital signatures as businesses are increasingly worried about document forgery, data leakage, and increased risks of fraud.

Compared to traditional paper documents that are easy to forge and copy, esignatures provide a way to sign documents digitally and officially, thereby making them suitable for safer online transactions.

Not all electronic signatures are built with the same level of security. But these are what distinguishes a safer eSignature solution from the riskier ones:

Certificate Authority (CA): eSignature is associated with a third-party certificate authority (CA) to verify that a valid signature has been added to the document.

Audit Trail: Uses audit trail to store the record about the users who have viewed, edited, and accessed the document. It ensures information integrity at all times and can be used as valid legal evidence in any court of law.

User Authentication: Instantly verifies and authenticates your customer identity from any location, anytime.

Compliance: Complies with regulations like ISO 27001, HIPAA, PCI DSS (SP) Level 1, UETA & the ESIGN Act.

Conclusion

eSignature is a boon for organizations trying to provide efficiency, transparency, and security in the digital process not found in traditional signatures. eSignature offers many benefits in the digital transformation journey of an organization, like improving employee productivity, safety, enhancing customer experience, maintaining compliance, and a lot more. Companies adopting electronic signatures will find themselves one step closer to the digital future.

Click here to learn more about eSignatures and how you can quickly adopt this technology without any further delay.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an eSignature example?

An eSignature example includes

  • A signature created using your fingers on the touch screen of a smartphone, tablet, or any digital device
  • Using a mouse to draw a signature on a laptop/desktop screen
  • You are using a keyboard to type in your signature or uploading and using the scanned image of the person’s ink signature.

Is there an app for electronic signatures?

Yes! The LunarPen eSignature app provides an easy way to upload, eSign the document, and share it with trusted sources.

Do electronic signatures hold up in court?

Lunarpen Electronic Signatures meet all strict requirements defined in the United States and Europe for safety and authentication. Your documents are legal and enforceable in a court of law.

What makes an electronic signature legal?

There must be a signer’s intent to accept and execute the agreement to qualify as a legal electronic signature. It requires the signer to take affirmative action like using a mouse or a touchscreen device to draw their signature, uploading a scanned signature, or using the keyboard to type your name as a signature.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
24
Apr
2021

How to Improve Customer Experience with Esignatures

Customer service is an opportunity to exceed your customer expectations - John Jantsch

Did you know that investing in customer experience initiatives has the potential to double your revenue in 36 months?

Don’t be surprised!

Another research by American Express found that 86% of customers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience (CX).

What is customer experience (CX)?

Is it about offering freebies, rewards, coupons, or heavy discounts to make a customer happy?

Not at all! - it is more about self-motivating the customer to do business transactions with the brands in speedy and convenient manner.

So, let’s redefine customer experience, which is “Creating an emotionally satisfying, positive experience with your brand or business, that leaves the customer feeling happy and satisfied that they did business with the brand.”

Why is customer experience important?

We all know companies have everything - the latest technology, lavish showrooms, the costliest hardware & products in the world to attract a customer.

But is it sufficient to build a lasting bond with the customer?

Did we forget an essential ingredient?

Yes!

Sometimes companies stop conveying human emotions connected with customer experience.

An excellent customer experience can be due to multiple reasons found helpful by a customer like helping finalize a product quickly, offering excellent competitive pricing for the products, or exceptional after-sales service to make a customer happy.

A positive customer experience:

- Increases brand loyalty

- Improves brand image

- Better customer engagement

- Boosts organic business growth

- Helps stand out in the competition

- Ensure positive word of mouth publicity

Improving customer experience with electronic signatures

eSignatures significantly improve customer experience by providing blazing fast access to customer services like esigning documents, KYC, customer approvals, Tax return filing, legal services, HR services, and many more. They are popular in the industry for their speed and simplicity. As for businesses, they reduce paperwork, cut short the time in signature and approval of the contracts, workforce hiring, limit purchases of printing devices, and storage of physical documents.

So, how do eSignatures improve customer experience?

  • No more waiting time to access services

According to a study, eSignatures reduce the average document processing time from five days to 37 minutes.

If you want to purchase a mobile sim, apply for a banking loan or sign a crucial document, you don’t need to sign a physical document and wait for weeks or more for the company’s confirmation and access to these services.

You get instant access to the needed services by signing in electronically from your own trusted device and complete the service formalities in no time. The application is instantly verified and accepted by the company. You get full access to the applied services the same business day. Apart from this, it saves you from the lengthy hassles of printing the application & identity document, self-attesting, and mailing it to the company for verification and confirmation.

  • Fully secure to use

Using a physical document for daily business activities brought in many issues like managing, storing, and keeping it safe from getting stolen or forged for misuse. There were frequent cases of the stored documents getting lost or leakage of the customer details.

In contrast, the esignature technology does document management systematically as all your documents are present in the cloud, with no chances of confidential data getting leaked or lost. You can share the document within or outside the professional network safely and securely.

Is eSigning a document safe?

An eSignature solution uses

  • Advanced Electronic Signature (AES) to ensure protection against forgery
  • 256-bit HTTPS advanced encryption is complicated for hackers to breach security

These eSignature security measures confirm that no one is spying on your connection.

Customers or businesses can fully trust esignature solutions to sign online contracts securely, initiate service or key announcements without doubting the source and authenticity of the signed document.

Ensuring a secure business environment helps reinstate customer faith in a brand, encouraging them to do more business transactions without the fear of their identity or confidential data getting stolen for misuse.

  • It helps track your documents

Physical documents are challenging to track. You have to constantly follow up with different stakeholders in the company or with new partners or clients on phone calls, emails & physical visits to know the signed documents’ status and remind other people who have still not signed it.

eSignature helps you make this task easy. Here is how you can easily track and esign the documents using LunarPen

  • Create or upload a document
  • Add signers’ email to decide who receives the document
  • Use LunarPen app to add eSignature box, date & time
  • Send the document for eSignature
  • Use the LunarPen interface to eSign your document
  • Track your document online

Now, no more wondering where the documents are, no more chasing them down, and no more delays. You can track the live status of your documents anytime.

  • Enables self-service for faster response

Customers want a solution for their problems, and they want it fast. The most important attribute of customer experience is fast response time.

How can you respond faster to a customer?

By customer self-service. Do you know that more than 40% of customers prefer self-service over human contacts?

In 2021, self-service is not a choice. It’s an absolute necessity.

It empowers your customers to explore service and find answers on their own.

How eSignature provides Self-servicing benefits to customers in 2021?

  • Faster service: You don’t have to rush to the printer & mail department for printing-scanning-mailing the physical document. One single tap on the eSignature app lets you speed past the create-sign-email cycle in minutes.
  • Less room for error: Even well-trained, experienced professionals make errors in creating and signing a document. When you use eSignature solutions, you create online documents with a lesser probability of mistakes in a shorter time.
  • Customer Satisfaction: As you use eSignature apps on your own, it gives you total command, confidence, and satisfaction in knowing, experiencing, and using the app features.
  • Simplify and modernize the sales process

A traditional purchasing process involves showing multiple product options to the customer. Based on the customer choice, a contract or agreement is worked out between the customer and the business to supply the product and complete the sales process. It is a lengthy process where many terms and conditions are negotiated & renegotiated between the parties before signing the actual agreement.

It’s time to modernize the purchase process!

What if you get a customized agreement, mutually agreed by both parties, without the stress of paperwork?

An eSignature solution helps you eSign the contractual documents instantly using digital devices. You don’t need to travel to sign a document, plus you get a super thrilled and delighted customer impressed with the speed and experience of the digital purchase process. It significantly improves the customer experience as they get the privilege to use the latest technology to execute essential business operations.

Case Study

Amway utilized the speed and efficiency of eSignatures to register new distributors for its products and increase revenue in European markets.

Challenge

The biggest challenge to expand in the European markets was to acquire new independent distributors. As a part of the process, contracts were printed, signed, and sent to prospective distributors for review and then sent back to Amway.

However, multiple contracts were returning to the company with missing information and signature. Returning a document without a signature meant a lot for the company, which meant that contractual terms were not acceptable to the distributor. In that case, the contract had to be sent back to prospective distributors for confirmation again. Apart from this, several agreements were lost in the mail, forcing the company to restart the contract process from scratch.

The manual process wasted a lot of business time, created confusion, and increased loads of manual paperwork.

Solution

Amway decided to change the distributor onboarding model from offline to online model using the esignature solution. It made the contractual signing process faster as distributors got the flexibility to sign contracts on the move using a mobile device.

The expectation from the eSignature solution was to increase the number of signed contracts with the distributors, boost company visibility, revenue, and brand image in the market.

Results

In the first year of deployment, the company signed contracts with 90,000 new distributors.

Results were mind-blowing:

- Improved registration experience for Independent Amway distributors

- Contract completion improved from weeks to seconds

- 50% reduction in administration

- Lowered distributor attrition during registration

The simple, intuitive process gives new independent Amway distributors a positive first impression and significantly reduces the number of potential distributors and prospects leaving the company.

Conclusion

eSignature is a valuable digital tool to boost customer experience and plays an undeniable part in the customer journey to transform a new customer into a qualified lead to generate a sale.

Our suggestion for businesses is to work on a dedicated customer experience strategy that will satisfy customers and turn them into advocates for your product.

At LunarPen, we help businesses build customer trust and loyalty using eSignature solutions.

SIGN UP for a FREE account to make eSignatures an integral part of your business strategy.

Frequently Asked Questions

How can digital customer experience be improved?

One can improve digital customer experience by following these steps:

  • Deep dive into the customer journey to gain insights
  • Observe and analyze customer behavior
  • Check user feedback through multiple channels
  • Gather important suggestions by the customers
  • Try to implement actionable suggestions
  • Focus on self-service to enhance customer experience
  • Take feedback from the customers after changes

How do you measure KPIs for customer experience?

It would be best if you used these KPIs to measure customer experience:

Net Promoter Score (NPS): It consists of two questions and gives only one customer experience-related number needed by the company to know the customer satisfaction level.

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT): It uses a scale from 1 to 5 to know customer satisfaction. 1 Star means the lowest, and 5 star means the highest.

Customer Effort Score (CES): It has different answers to judge customer experience starting from Very difficult, difficult, Neither, Easy, Very Easy.

Churn Rate: It shows the number of lost customers that have stopped using your product or services.

Retention Rate: It is a measurement of how a business retains customers over a period of time.

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): It shows the total amount of money a customer would spend on a product or service during their lifetime.

How do clients sign contracts electronically?

You need to follow these easy steps on LunarPen App to sign contracts electronically:

  • Upload the document from a device or cloud storage
  • Add email ids if you want the signature of other people
  • Add eSignature text box, date, time, and further details in the document
  • eSign the document using a smartphone, tablet, laptop, or other devices
  • Email the document to the recipient

What are the four main areas of digital transformation?

A CEO should focus on these areas of digital transformation:

  • Employee Empowerment
  • Customer Engagement
  • IT infrastructure modernization
  • Innovation of products and services

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
17
Apr
2021

eSignature Laws

Do you know electronically signed documents have the same legal rights due to valid eSignature laws in comparison to the documents signed by a ball pen? Despite this, people suspect if they are permissible by law and are hesitant to use esignatures because they believe it can be forged, misinterpreted, and copied quickly. The hard reality is handwritten signatures can be easily duplicated using different methods adopted by fraudsters like simulation, tracing and freehand. In contrast, electronic signatures have many security and authentication layers to protect the esigned documents along with court-admissible transaction proof backed by the law.

The popularity of esignatures has risen since the year 2000 as world powers have put them on par with handwritten signatures by introducing laws making them legitimate.

To recognize the enforceability of e-signatures:

- India recognized esignatures under the IT Act
- USA recognized ESIGN and UETA
- EU recognized eIDAS Act

Let’s look at the esignature legality in these countries of the world

INDIA

In India, the Information Technology Act 2000 grants the same legal status to electronic and digital signatures as handwritten signatures in Indian law.

Electronic signature

Defined under Section 2(1)(ta) of the IT Act, 2000 as “Authentication of any electronic record by a subscriber using the electronic technique specified in the second schedule and includes a digital signature.”

Chapter III Electronic governance of the IT act grants legal recognition to electronic signatures and electronic governance.

Digital Signature

According to section 2(1)(p) of the Information Technology Act, 2000, a Digital signature means “authentication of any electronic record by a subscriber by means of an electronic method or procedure in accordance with the provisions of section 3”

Section 5 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 gives legal recognition to digital signatures.

Chapter V of the IT act provides these details about securing electronic records and electronic signatures.

Secure electronic record: Where any security procedure has been applied to an electronic record at a specific point of time, then such record shall be deemed to be a secure electronic record from such point of time to the time of verification.

Secure electronic signature: An electronic signature shall be deemed to be a secure electronic signature if -

  • the signature creation data at the time of affixing the signature was under the exclusive control of signatory and no other person.
  • The signature creation data was stored and affixed in such an exclusive manner as may be prescribed.

In case of digital signature, the ―signature creation data means the private key of the subscriber.

How to know if an esignature is valid in India?

Under the IT Act eSignature law, an electronic signature must meet the following requirements to be deemed accurate and lawfully valid:

  • An electronic signature must be unique for each signatory.
  • The signatory must have control over the data used to produce the electronic signature when signing.
  • Any tampering with the affixed electronic signature or the document must be detectable.
  • An audit trail records all the steps taken during the signing process
  • A certifying authority (CA) must issue the signer certificates authorized by the Controller of Certifying Authorities under the IT act

eSignature IT Act impact on business

Saved up to 1.3 hours per transaction in preparing, reviewing & negotiating documents

  • Improved document security & reduced time spent on documents from hours to minutes
  • Faster sales cycles with ready-made templates & document tracking features
  • $11 cost saved per transaction after switching to digital signature
  • Massive reduction in operational expenses by the banking sector

USA

The ESIGN Act was declared a law on 30 June 2023 and defined electronic signature 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”.

The most significant takeaway for contract compliance is that the signature’s electronic representation must be aligned with a contract or other document and adopted by the signatory, by any act, with the intent to be bound.

Following federal preemption, ESIGN law allows esignatures in all fifty US States where the federal law applies. It means it affects people who do online business in these states. The regulation applies both to electronic signatures and electronic records. If the federal government’s law does not apply, every State has electronic signature laws, most of which follow the UETA act.

The UETA Act centres exclusively on electronic business, commercial and government contracts. Compared to the ESIGN law adopted by the US states, the UETA act followed a state-by-state basis. Every State has the power to accept or reject the guidelines present in the act. If there is a conflict between ESIGN and UETA Acts, then the state law is abidable. Right now, forty-seven states adopted UETA, excluding New York, Washington, Illinois, Columbia, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

How to check compliance with these Acts?

  • There must be explicit consent to do business electronically
  • Electronic signatures are valid only if parties intend to sign
  • An electronic signature must be associated with the signed document
  • The electronic signature must be attributable to the person signing the document
  • An esigned document must be in the form of an electronic record that the recipient can retain at the delivery time.
  • Presence of checks and measures to know if the document has tampered

Impact of ESIGN Act on businesses

  • Revolutionized the real estate industry by eliminating clunky transactions & customer pain points
  • Armed with electronic signature on tablets, field sales executives observed a 50% reduction in the average no of meetings to acquire new customers.
  • HIPAA compliant eSignature in the healthcare industry made it easy to manage patient records

Impact on the banking industry

  • Reduced the application time from 8 days to 24-48 hours
  • Annual scanning and imaging costs decreased by $1 million
  • 90 per cent reduction in document errors
  • 80 per cent of document handling costs eliminated
  • The entire workflow reduced to just 4 steps
  • Manual back-office operations no longer required

European Union (EU)

The eIDAS act (electronic IDentification, Authentication and trust Services ), also known as Regulation (EU) No. 910/2014 is established by the European Commission to achieve a Digital single market.

It recognized three signature types as electronic signatures, Qualified electronic signatures, Advanced electronic signatures and defines

electronic signatures are “data in electronic form attached to or logically associated with other data in electronic form.”

A qualified electronic signature is an advanced electronic signature created by a suitable electronic signature creation device based on a qualified certificate for electronic signatures.

An advanced electronic signature means an electronic signature that meets the requirements set out in Article 26 of the eIDAS Act.

The purpose of this eSignature law is very clear from the first paragraph of the act “Building trust in the online environment is the key to economic and social development. Lack of trust, in particular, because of a perceived lack of legal certainty, makes consumers, businesses and public authorities hesitate to carry out transactions electronically and to adopt new services.”

The regulation seeks to enhance trust in electronic transactions by providing a common foundation for secure electronic transactions between citizens, businesses and public authorities to increase the effectiveness of private and public online services, ecommerce, online companies in the European Union.

How to check compliance with eIDAS Act?

Electronic signature: The electronic signature must be

  • Applied by the person associated with the signature
  • Involved in a manner that demonstrates the intent of the signer
  • Associated with the document or data the signer intended to sign

Advanced Electronic Signatures (AES): It must

  • Be uniquely linked to the signer
  • Identify the signer
  • Be under the sole control of the signer
  • Detect changes to the data after the application of AES

Qualified Electronic Signature: It must be

  • Created using a QES creation device
  • Supported by a qualified certificate

What does the eIDAS Act mean for businesses in the EU?

The growing use of electronic Identification schemes (eIDs) will save EU businesses worth 11 Billion Euros every year. It also benefits industries throughout the EU.

Financial Sector: One of the biggest beneficiaries of this act is the financial sector allowing eIDs and trust services to use KYC for quick onboarding of the customers. Thanks to eIDAS solutions, all processes are done online in a highly secure manner.

Retail Sector: Examples of how the online retail sector uses eID and trust services:

  • Customers buying restricted or high-value products use eID for thorough identification tests.
  • eSignatures & etimestamps save money by streamlining the processes improving document tracking.
  • Use of certified website authentication certificates to increase consumer confidence in online retail websites & prevent data phishing.

Transport Sector: Examples of how the transportation sector used eID and trust services:

  • Customers use eID and trust services to prove their identity, provide a safe log-in to the service
  • eTimestamps highlight transparency where several carriers are involved
  • Use of eSeals on essential documents to verify their origin & integrity while reducing reliance on paper-based documents

Lunarpen eSignatures comply with all eSignature laws with strict protection and authentication standards. It is legally valid for doing all online business transactions safely and securely.

SIGN UP Now to be a part of LunarPen family.

Conclusion

We have observed and understood eSignature laws in all of these countries. If we notice, the meaning and usage of electronic signature laws are altogether the same in every part of the world. These laws are designed with only one thing in mind- to make life easier for people, cut short the steps in manual processing of services, increase digital adoption, and ensure faster alignment with everyday activities supporting tremendous business growth. eSignature laws are the stepping stones to digital transformation- your gateway to a limitless world.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are electronic signatures legally enforceable?

Electronic signatures are valid in India, the US & other major countries of the world as eSignature laws are enforceable in the form of the IT Act, ESIGN Act, eIDAS Act, and a lot more. These laws are responsible for making eSignature valid in each of these countries.

What is the law on electronic signatures?

Every country has its eSignature law clarifying the definition and usage of electronic signature and digital signature. You can read the above for detailed information about different eSignature laws.

Is LunarPen eSignature legal in Europe and US?

LunarPen eSignature is fully compliant with the eIDAS regulation in Europe and the ESIGN Act in the US, making it legal to do business and online transactions in both of the countries.

Is an electronically signed document legal?

As per the different eSignature laws in the world, an eSigned document is legal if it meets the defined conditions described in each of the laws.

What constitutes a legal electronic signature?

A legal electronic signature must have evidence of the signer’s intent and consent to sign the document. This is made possible if the subscriber takes positive action such as using an ePen, Smartphone, Tablet, mouse, or a keyboard to create the eSignature and electronically sign the document.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
10
Apr
2021

Top Business Challenges Solved by E Signature

Creating, signing and organizing physical documents are a never-ending task. All of us have been through the time-consuming process of mailing and retrieving hard copies of vital documents such as applications and contracts that include your actual handwriting signature. If copying, mailing, and using multiple paper sheets with separate copies weren’t bad enough for the world and the environment, imagine what would be. In that case, the business is also extremely risky and vulnerable in terms of the authenticity of those signatures.

Since the conventional contract signing process is both time-consuming and expensive for the firms and the customers, Electronic signatures, which substitute traditional signatures on paper, are being proposed or adopted by a growing number of businesses.

An electronic signature solution has the power to change the way you conduct business and pave the way for improved profit and creativity.

Discover these top business challenges that you can solve with esignatures.

These days’ people are unwilling to wait even for a minute to get things done. They instantly want results in their hands after making payment for the business solution. Modern business practices help deliver quality products on time securely without compromising on the customer experience.

Here are the expectations from modern business practices:

- Speed

- Security

- Authenticity

- Easy usage

- Reduces the process steps

- Provides a competitive advantage

- Eliminates physical presence of a person

eSignatures complement modern business practices in a big way as they are easy to integrate seamlessly into organizations’ existing business processes. You don’t need to dust off your printer cum fax machine to copy and scan the documents or send someone around the town to sign a stack of papers.

Say goodbye to all the manual delays and errors in creating, editing, authenticating, and signing the documents. By using eSignature apps, businesses can complete their contract deals quickly and safely by going online.

  • Document Traceability:

You get a call from the top company management to find out the details of a particular document. Finding that one document in a pile of thousands of documents is an arduous task and a sheer wastage of employee productivity, potential, and business hours.

What if you could find the required documents in a matter of a few seconds without involving your employee?

eSignature helps you trace and ensures transparency, reliability, and evidential validity of your paperless records deposited in secure cloud repositories without having to sweat or divert your attention away from your primary task.

Choosing the correct electronic or digital signature solution means that you and your clients can email, accept, and monitor documents by notifying them when the recipient opens and signs the documents. As a result, both parties will go ahead with the business deal’s execution in no time.

  • Enhance Security:

Using electronic signatures removes the need to chase piles of paper and ensures enhanced security for the signed documents as one of the critical elements of using esignature is the ability to prove the signing party’s identity. You cannot use an electronic signature app without verifying your identity. In the case of a contract or agreement, it also shows that both parties agree by the esigned contract.

The eSignature app lets you keep track of the identity of the person accessing & reading the document and instantly notifying whenever the verified receiver signs it. This additional oversight is essential for the protection of personal information.

Electronic signatures use a digital storage solution backed by data encryption mechanisms, user authentication, and secure repositories to hold contracts which are a better option than storing them in a filing cabinet. It prevents the stored document from getting stolen, copied, getting tampered or damaged due to mishandling.

How can businesses use electronic signature apps more securely?

Businesses can use the e-signature network to deliver documents to various clients for signing. One must assign the document a name on an electronic signature app, upload it, and add signer information. However, before sending the contract to the recipient, you must use text boxes to indicate places on the document that the client must sign with either initials or signatures.

To sign online documents, the customer can use a smartphone or other signature recording devices or apps. When your client has finished signing and clicks the Finish button, the sender gets a message stating that their client has completed the paper signing process.

  • Status of the documents

Now you don’t have to waste time in follow-ups with the customer for knowing the document clearance status. The dilemma stage to speak, call, remind, communicate, schedule or reschedule a meeting with the customer for signing the document is over.

Using an electronic signature or a digital signature, you quickly track if the client or the customer has signed the document or is still pending.

The document status monitoring feature is helpful for business users who have hectic schedules. Furthermore, you can check where each document is in the signature process at any moment.

  • Improving speed:

The manual process of gathering signatures is a daunting task. You must run from door to door to meet the clients and seek their appointment for signing the documents. Sometimes you may even have to waste an entire day waiting for the client. It affects employee productivity in a big way as other prioritized tasks take a backseat.

On the other hand, an electronic signature solution helps you to circumvent the inefficient download-print-sign-scan-email loop. Without ever leaving the submission, you can receive the signature in seconds and the paperwork returned to the requester. Consequently, the turnaround period shortens.

  • Customer Experience

96% of customers say customer service is vital in their choice of loyalty to a brand.

Companies that excel at customer service have 1.5 times more committed staff than less customer-focused companies. Employee participation improves by 20% on average in businesses that enhance their consumer service.

90% of CEOs agree the customer has the most significant effect on their company.

How electronic signatures improve customer experience?

eSignature allows you to:

Simplify the purchasing process:

The consumer signs the contract using electronic signatures as soon as they agree on your product or service, without any delays or waiting.

Customer loyalty skyrockets when they save hefty travel costs and do not have to fly to sign a contract, mail signed documents back, or print and scan a signed document to deliver by email.

They can log in to the esignature app in seconds from any computer or portable device online and complete the contract without being physically present.

Modernize the purchasing process:

You meet customers’ digital needs by using electronic signature solutions. Customers have become accustomed to the speed, convenience & safety of digital transactions.

You won’t have to go through any more time-consuming paper procedures for electronic signatures as all formalities are completed electronically in just a few minutes. It projects a new and forward-thinking vision of a business that values its customers’ time.

Conclusion

Electronic signatures are gradually bringing much-needed changes in business processes around the world. They have made daily interactions between businesses, individuals, and public organizations much easier.

It’s no wonder that esignatures are becoming an important part of the digital transformation strategy valuing business collaboration. To achieve a competitive advantage, it is necessary to implement an effective digital transition strategy. However, without an eSignature platform, no digital transformation strategy is complete. The advantages of esignatures include increased productivity and lower costs along with enhanced user experience.

Begin your digital transformation journey by implementing eSignatures today.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the benefits of electronic signature?

You would be glad to know about these astounding benefits of electronic signatures:

  • Enhanced security for day to day business operations
  • Very easy to use and takes less time to implement
  • Paperless workflow means no need to print-sign-scan
  • Get access to centralized document storage
  • Better workflow tracking with esignature apps
  • Increase collaboration and get projects moving
  • Lower transaction costs due to fewer chances of human errors

Is electronic signature acceptable in businesses?

Electronic signatures, like handwritten paper and pen signatures, are legally recognized, registered, and accepted by companies all over the world. The audit trail, which is linked to the electronic signature, makes it more appropriate in the event of a legal dispute and provide a detailed record of the usage of electronic signature in the documents.

Can a company sign electronically?

Yes, a company can sign a document electronically through an appointed and approved representative.

What documents cannot be signed electronically?

You cannot sign these documents electronically:

  • Wills, Deeds, and Leases
  • Papers for adoption
  • Divorce documents
  • Orders of the Court
  • Notices of termination of work (leases, utility, etc.)
  • Repossession notifications
  • Foreclosure notice
  • An eviction notice
  • Notices of product recalls

How do I verify an electronic signature?

When you get a signed document, you may want to verify the signer and the signed material by validating the signatures.

Authenticity checking confirms that the signer’s certificate and its parent certificates are available in the valuator’s trusted identities list.

Document integrity verification confirms that the signed material has not changed since it was signed. If the content of the document changes, document integrity review confirms if the content changed in a way permitted by the signer.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
03
Apr
2021

How are electronic signatures better than handwritten signatures?

Companies generate a lot of paperwork! Too much of it reduces your business efficiency, slows down data collection, storage, and retrieval, increases chances of errors, & has security issues. As more and more businesses automate their processes, the need to evolve from a handwritten signature to an electronic signature becomes increasingly crucial, fuelled by customers’ digital presence, demanding the availability of services from anytime, anywhere.

Handwritten signatures are swiftly getting replaced by electronic signatures worldwide due to their ease of use, quick return on investment, time saved on manual processing, speed, security, and verification by governments, banks, and regulatory authorities.

You can see the sharp surge in popularity for electronic signatures compared to handwritten signatures as per the latest trending data from Google.

Source: Google Trends

So, what makes electronic signatures better than handwritten signatures? Let’s find it out.

Supports Work from Home:

From public transport struggles to global health concerns, sometimes things get in the way of getting to the office and forcing you to remain at home.

How to make sure that your contracts and agreements do not get affected if you work from home?

Now, we live in an era when companies have made work from home compulsory. We look at some of the different ways that electronic signatures help keep your company going forward, no matter where you are or what department you work in.

- Close deals much faster as you don’t have to rush to the client physically for esigning the document

- Helps in employee hiring by automating & accelerating the employee agreement process

- Improves governance by centralizing the storage & management of all signed versions of the documents.

How to use electronic signatures while working from home?

You only need to install the esignature app on your device, connect with other parties to use the same. You would be able to create new documents online by uploading or using readymade templates. After that, you add email ids of signees needed for esigning the document by drawing, uploading, or typing the signature. Finally, you can send the document securely to clients, colleagues and speed up business processes without being present in offices.

Money and Time Savings:

Do you know that an organization spends 15% of its revenue creating, managing & distributing paper files for documentation?

Going paperless and adopting e signatures in a business helps you in so many ways. It restricts resources, workforce, and hardware equipment needed for procuring, printing, scanning, and mailing signed documents. The frees up time, allowing you to focus on essential tasks, saves processing time, and increases business response time, encouraging more cash flow in the industry.

Digital processes help fast-track business transformation by automating document flow, minimizes repetitive tasks to replace the time-consuming processes involved in manual capturing of data, re-entering data on machines, scanning, and storing it. It helps your team serve the customers more efficiently and create memorable experiences for them.

Electronic signatures need fewer resources like ink, paper, and postage resources. They support instant digitization of the business approval process. You don’t need to be in the office to prepare and esign a document. All necessary documents are ready online and forwarded to other signees in the online network. Electronic signatures apps empower you to access and esign a document using tablets, smart phones & laptops. So, you save a lot of time spent getting the document signed and sharing it with respective stakeholders without delay.

Enhanced Security:

A handwritten signature can’t assure you that the original document is signed by a genuine person as fraudsters quickly forge the signatures. Also, it is difficult to identify and authenticate the original signature from the fake ones.

On the contrary, electronic signatures only allow relevant invited parties to esign a document. If an online form needs esignature from other signees, the signer adds the signees’ email ids to access and esign the record on an esignature app.

Here are the details of the secure process of sending a document for esignature with the LunarPen app

  • Receive an email notification to sign a document on the esignature app
  • Go to the email and view the document shared for esigning
  • Verify the identity of the signee before esigning a document
  • Please review the document before signing it
  • Draw, write, or upload the signature
  • eSign the document securely

Electronic Record:

It is not easy to track changes in the document with a handwritten signature.

eSignatures comes with an audit trail feature to track every change in the document and capture details of when the document is opened, changed, viewed, and signed by a verified user. Audit trails maintain system activity and user activity records. It assists in detecting performance problems, flaws in applications, and security violations.

LunarPen audit trail helps you with all the tools to access, edit, send and sign the documents securely using the industry standard 256 bit HTTPS encryption. You can track all the details of the document right from

  • The time on which a user created the document
  • When the signee receives the document
  • When the signee consents to esign the document
  • When other stakeholders receive esigned document

Saves Environment

Around 40% of the world’s harvested trees produce papers. Even though the paper is recyclable, an A4 size paper requires 10 liters of water per sheet and emits methane, a greenhouse gas on rotting. Industry research firm Gartner estimates that as much as 3% of a company’s revenue is spent on paper, printing, copying, scanning, storing, transporting, and maintaining information files. Now you can realize the hidden costs of doing a handwritten signature.

Using an esignature for official work ensures:

  • No chopping down of trees for paper production
  • No paper wastage due to electronic transfer of data
  • Protects natural habitat of animals and earth’s natural biodiversity
  • Minimal usage of natural resources like water for paper production
  • Reduction in carbon footprint as esigned data is accessible from anywhere
  • Reduces electronic waste as you don’t have to buy printing machines

Indestructible Documents

Documents with handwritten signatures are prone to destruction due to mishandling, workplace accidents and can be easily lost, damaged, or forged. This forces the company and its workforce to leave the current prioritized task, trace the document, start every related business process from scratch, and waste valuable business hours.

Electronic signatures give a massive advantage to your business:

  • It is difficult to destroy documents in electronic format
  • Secure cloud servers ensure data is never misplaced
  • eSigned information is challenging to tamper and duplicate

Conclusion

There are many crucial business processes requiring signatures, such as the approval of contracts, invoices, and employee evaluation forms. Handwritten signatures slow down these processes as they are dependent on the exchange of paper and the signatory’s presence. Now you can see why electronic signatures fit better in modern business practices than handwritten signatures. They flawlessly integrate into an organization’s business processes and don’t depend on geographical boundaries and a person’s physical availability. They complement businesses in need of digital transformation, speed, safety, and security. Use the LunarPen to Fastrack and turnaround day-to-day business processes in a single click.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is an electronic signature an original signature?

An electronic signature is just like an original signature done by the signer on an electronic device rather than on paper. Pens create physical signatures, while ePen, mouse, tablet, and smartphone create electronic signatures. They have the same legality as that of a physically signed document. As many as 60 countries have passed laws to make electronic signatures fully legal and permissible by law. e-signatures are legally valid in India for over 18 years. The Information Technology Act (IT Act), passed in 2000, granted e-signatures the same legal status as handwritten signatures.

What is the difference between a digital signature and an electronic signature?

Key differences between a digital signature and an electronic signature are:

Usage: Digital signatures are used for securing a document from tampering while an electronic signature is used for verifying a document

Signature creation: You have to seek permission from a certification authority for using a digital signature While an electronic signature is done as per the intention of the signatory.

Authentication: Digital signatures use certificate based digital ids while an electronic signature verifies identity through email, OTP, phone pin etc.

What qualifies as an electronic signature?

The ESIGN act defines electronic signatures 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.” The versatility of its definition allows LunarPen to offer multiple solutions to capture an electronic signature using a smartphone, computer, or any portable device.

A qualified electronic signature (QES) includes all the secure features like

- Ability to identify and link its signatory

- Allowing the signatory to access & control keys for creating an electronic signature
- Identify if the data is tampered after its accompanying message has been signed

What does an electronic signature looks like?

You have the sole authority to decide the look and feel of your electronic signature. Most electronic signatures look like handwritten signatures. When you create an esignature with LunarPen, you have the option to

  • Draw your esignature using mouse
  • Type the esignature with a keyboard
  • Write signature on the touch screen
  • Upload esignature into LunarPen account
Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
25
Mar
2021

Best Practices of Electronic Signature Security

Electronic signature security is one of the top concerns of digital transactions as more and more businesses empower customers to make secure and faster transactions on the web. When you collaborate with an eSignature vendor, don’t look for an eSignature service that is ESIGN compliant or has a particular security specification. We recommend you to take a broader view of the e-signature security that also addresses:

  • Selecting appropriate authentication levels
  • Making esigned documents tamper-proof
  • Easier verification of esigned documents
  • Reliability of records independent of the vendor
  • Verifying vendor’s track record of protecting customer’s data
  • Creating trusted experience through white labeling

Such a focused multi-directional strategy protects the organization’s reputation, reinstates customer confidence, and reduces the risk of non-compliance fines in electronic signature security.

To identify the esignature security requirements against which you should evaluate solutions, you should proactively check these security best practices before finalizing and working with an esignature vendor.

Best practices for implementing Electronic Signature Security

Identification, Authentication, and Attribution

Identification: The identification process identifies first-time applicants using two types of information:

  • Personally Identifiable Information(PII) like Driving license, Aadhaar Card, Passport number
  • Nonpublic Personal Information(NPI) like credit score, income, social security number

You get Verified PII or NPI information through third-party identification services. In this case, look for an e-signature solution provider that smoothly integrates with third-party identity verification services to establish genuine esignature users’ identities.

Authentication: Once a signer’s identity is verified, organizations issue electronic credentials to the users to facilitate secure digital transactions. The organization dealing with high-value, high-risk business transactions use robust multi-factor authentication services to ensure a safe environment and protect identities, data, and digital lives.

In this case, look for an e-signature solution that easily integrates with authentication services and offers a wide range of authentication options for a smoother user experience like:

  • User authentication through user id and password
  • User authentication using secret Questions & Answer (Q&A)
  • Using e-Sign sessions for verification of email address
  • Uploading identification images for e-sign transaction

Attribution: Use the attribution process to prove the identity of the person who clicked to apply an esignature.

One of the quickest and cost-effective ways to establish attribution is to use affidavits.

Take a case where the signer has to click a button to e-sign a document on the agent’s device. Just before handing over the device’s control to the signer, the device handling agent or representative gets an affidavit text confirming that the signer has received the esignature device. The affidavit text successfully captures the transfer of control as a part of the audit trail.

Another easier way is to send a one-time passcode (OTP) via SMS text to the signer’s Smartphone for gaining access to the e-sign session.

Document and electronic signature security

The security of electronic signature and the esigned documents are equally crucial for a signed contract.

There are several points for consideration:

  • Electronic signature and the esigned documents must be secured using the digital signature security technology that creates a digital fingerprint of the signed document ( called a hash) used for verifying the integrity of the signed records. If there is an attempt to tamper with the documents, the electronic signature is visibly invalidated.
  • If signers esign a document on different days, then a comprehensive audit trail should include each signature’s date and time.
  • All electronic signatures, timestamps, and audit trails should be embedded directly within the document rather than stored separately in the cloud.
  • It must be easy to verify that there are no changes in the signed record, independent of the vendor.
  • One should avoid e signature solutions that require you to access servers to verify the signature or documents. It can pose significant problems for you if the subscription services stop or the e signature vendor goes out of business.

LunarPen uses audit trails to store and track every change in the document starting from tracking the date of signing a document to change signs in the document and retrieve data anytime for legal purposes.

Cloud Security

eSignature solutions are available both on-premises and in the cloud.

The on-premises esignature solution runs entirely within the company’s network without the need for any external connection to keep the data on-site. On the other hand, a growing number of companies are adopting cloud storage to access documents for esignature transactions as it is speedy and cost-effective. However, it comes with several security risks like data privacy, shared servers, data leakage, and lack of data backups.

It would be best to look after esignature vendors that provide tailor-made secure storage solutions as per the organization’s need.

LunarPen understands these security risks very well and has partnered with leading cloud infrastructure service providers like Onedrive, Google Drive, and Dropbox to access documents securely and send them for e signature to respective signers and signees in a few seconds.

These cloud solutions follow world-class SSL and Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) encryption systems. With PFS, a user can’t reuse a private SSL key for sessions that have occurred in the past. Even if an unauthorized person gets access to the SSL key, it isn’t easy to decrypt older traffic, making cloud solutions highly safe for day-to-day business transactions.

Use white labeling to safeguard signing service & customers against phishing attacks

Enhancing customer experience is the prime focus area of digital transformation. Organizations often depend on third-party solutions to support their day-to-day business process. A slight mistake ruins customer experience, leaks confidential information, and endangers the company’s finances that can tarnish its image.

So, a company must safeguard itself, its clients, and the brand name by ensuring a safe and transparent online transaction process.

The best practice is to white label the entire e-signing experience so that only your brand is visible across the transaction and not the vendor’s brand. White labeling prevents fraudsters from attacking your valuable customers through phishing emails.

Organizations should look for esignature service providers that enable the use of white labeling in esign process.

As a responsible esignature company, LunarPen recommends white labeling in every aspect of the esign process.

The best esignature solution service provider should allow you to

  • Use the company’s email servers to send direct emails and not through third-party service providers.
  • Customize the brand’s logo, theme color & visibility of header, footer, navigation bar,
  • Personalize the content, look & sound of email notifications
  • Customize dialog boxes and error messages

Case Study: How Hackers used fake DocuSign email for phishing

Hackers used DocuSign documents to steal user credentials from all the major email providers.

The attack began when a user received an unknown email that appeared to be from DocuSign as it included its original company logo and the email content seemed like real emails sent from the company.

The email’s first line didn’t have any recipient’s name and only mentioned “Good day.”

Cofence, phishing detection, and response platform analyzed the email header. They realized that the threat source originated from an unknown domain narndeo-tech.com owned by Hetzner, a well-known web hosting service provider and data center operator in Germany.

Its researchers found an embedded hyperlink pointing towards six different options for users to enter their credentials and access DocuSign documents. Fake login pages were recreated for Ms. Outlook, Office 365, Gmail, and Apple iCloud so that users enter and reveal their original login credentials.

It is the best example of a phishing case where cybercriminals used a well-known company’s brand name to steal customer information using emails.

LunarPen strongly advises its users to be extremely cautious when using an external link on an email that asks them to share their user credentials.

If you are keen on learning more about the electronic signature security checklist, click here.

Conclusion

When businesses implement an e-signature solution, It is always advisable to take a broad view of the electronic signature security, starting from identification, authentication and ending with the solution provider’s ability to build trust and a smooth user experience.

Trusted service means stringent security measures. But at the same time, the security level of an esignature solution should not conflict with the customer experience. It is important to balance security concerns with the solution usability as over-engineering can negatively affect solution adoption and usability.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is an eSign document?

eSign document means an electronically signed document in PDF, Doc, Xls formats. Such documents are signed using an ePen, mouse, or finger movement on any smartphone, laptop & Tablet securely using an e signature app protected by 256-bit HTTPS advanced encryption.

What is the purpose of esigning a document?

Its purpose is to authenticate and quickly identify the person who has initiated the written communication and ensure a secure exchange of information between different parties. The esignature made by an individual on the document signifies knowledge, approval, acceptance, or obligation.

What are the benefits of an electronic signature?

These are the significant benefits of using electronic signature:

1) Save Costs: Save time in doing paperwork, printing, scanning, mailing, delivering, and storing the document
2) Save Time: Saves you from age-old rituals of paperwork. Going digital saves a lot of time, allowing you to focus on other essential tasks.
3) Legal Compliance: Electronic signatures are legally binded and acceptable all over the world.
4) Mobility: A significant advantage of eSignatures is helping businesses function irrespective of location & time.

How can I eSign documents for free?

Follow these simple steps to eSign a document for free:

Step 1: Click LunarPen to open a free account
Step 2: Create or upload a document using templates, Google Drive & Dropbox
Step 3: Use the signed document sharing feature
Step 5: Send the document for signature
Step 6: Use the LunarPen interface to esign your documents for free
Step 7: Receive signed documents by email

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
17
Mar
2021

How to eSign a Document

If you are wondering how to eSign a document, it is definitely easier than the lengthier alternative of printing, signing, scanning and finally emailing the document to the intended recipients. There has been a sharp increase in the use of e-signatures due to its contribution in ease of doing business while ensuring the safety, security and cost effectiveness of signed documents.

That’s the reason behind the global popularity of the trending search term “How to eSign a Document” as more startups, entrepreneurs & businesses from US, UK and India are curious to learn about it.

Data Source: Google Trends

We have to understand the concept of eSign first before knowing the in-depth process of eSigning a document.

What is eSign?

eSign or eSignature refers to data in electronic form which is a legal way to get approval or consent on electronic documents (Sources : laptops, Tablets, Smartphone) and is used by the signatory to replace handwritten signatures in virtually every personal or business process.

eSign provides the same legal standing like a handwritten signature and is legal, enforceable and trusted by countries all over the world, as it adheres to the specific regulation requirements under which it was created. These reasons make eSign extremely safe & secure for business transactions anytime from anywhere.

Why eSign a document?

Secure online services: eSign service can only be accessed by users that have been authenticated using e-KYC services. To prevent misuse and fraud of eSign, the private keys of esign users are destroyed immediately after one time use.

Easy to implement: eSign records the e-KYC ID to verify the identity of the signer and provides configurable authentication options for eKYC that includes the OTP or biometric details of the e-KYC service provider enabling the eSign users to get easy access to legally valid Digital Signature service.

Easier access to legally valid signatures: eSign process includes the signer consent, digital Signature Certificate issuance request and digital Signature creation ensuring assured access to legally valid signatures only.

Respects Privacy: eSign ensures privacy of the signer by requiring that only the thumbprint of the document be submitted for signature function instead of the whole document.

How to eSign a Document online?

LunarPen is the best eSignature app trusted by top companies that lets you electronically sign all the documents, safely, securely and absolutely free of cost to manage your contracts and drive business seamlessly.

Take a look at the simple step by step process to eSign documents:

  • Create or upload a document:

You can upload the documents by using different options like:

Upload File button – Go to My computer, select the drive and trace the file location to upload the file in pdf, text, doc, docx, csv, xlx, png & jpg formats.

Select Templates – Use in-built templates for invoice, sales letter and reuse them. Share templates to your team members to save time and upload custom documents quickly.

Google Drive & Dropbox – LunarPen gives you industry first features to upload documents directly from the cloud either by using Google drive or Dropbox authentication.

After the documents are uploaded, a preview of the document will appear as a thumbnail.

  • Use the Signed document sharing feature:

LunarPen makes your day to day task easier by sharing two different options to share the signed document.

My Sign: This option gives you the flexibility to share the signed document created by you with a closed group of people to receive the documents in private.

MySelf & Others: If you have a document that needs your sign as well as the signature of other professionals then this option is useful.

  • Send for Signature:

Once you have selected any of the two options, you have to fill out details like subject & message to explain the agenda of the signed documents to the recipients. Finally, Click “Prepare doc for signing” once done.

  • Use the LunarPen interface to sign your document:

LunarPen gives you advanced options to insert different fields needed for signing a document like Name, initials, Signature, Signature date and the checkbox.

LunarPen gives you customized options to draw, write and upload your signature using LunarPen Signature field. It’s one click options enable you to use customized signature for all kinds of documents.

After you have inserted the signature in the document using the signature field and clicked Send, the signed document is sent on the specified emails and you get to see the summary of the shared document like the one shown below.

  • Receive signed document on emails:

The signed document is received by both the signee and the recipients on email in below format ensuring that only the added email ids get the opportunity to view & access the esign document on the LunarPen app safely and securely.

Is eSigning a document safe?

LunarPen uses advanced audit trail features to preserve the information related to editing, sending and signing documents in seconds. This makes it possible to track and audit the digital signatures transparently, so that each transaction can be traced.

To ensure security throughout the signing and verification process:

  • Each party is authenticated via a private code sent via SMS to offer vital security & protection to online users
  • Data is encrypted and stored using industry- standard 256-bit HTTPS advanced encryption making it difficult for hackers to breach it
  • Signed document can be accessed and viewed only by authenticated personnel on LunarPen platform
  • Our e-signature application complies with eSign acts to prevent data leaks & make it threat proof
  • Qualified advanced electronic signature (AES) ensures protection against forgery as signature creation data is used only once

Are you ready to eSign a document?

Now you know the concepts of electronically signing a document which is the safest way to sign crucial documents without the fear of signee data getting leaked to the third person. eSigning a document not only saves cost & time but improves user convenience and addresses privacy concerns as well.

It is important for professionals to align towards the best solution to remain consistent and competitive in the market. LunarPen is a smart business-friendly document management solution that
empower organizations to accelerate their business processes, minimize cost, and maximize productivity.

Click Now to securely create delivers eSign and manage your documents with LunarPen.

Frequently Asked Questions

  What is an eSign document?

eSign document means an electronically signed document in PDF, Doc, Xls formats. Such documents are signed using an ePen, mouse, or finger movement on any smartphone, laptop & Tablet securely using an e signature app protected by 256-bit HTTPS advanced encryption.

  What is the purpose of esigning a document?

Its purpose is to authenticate and quickly identify the person who has initiated the written communication and ensure a secure exchange of information between different parties. The esignature made by an individual on the document signifies knowledge, approval, acceptance, or obligation.

  What are the benefits of an electronic signature?

These are the significant benefits of using electronic signature:

1) Save Costs: Save time in doing paperwork, printing, scanning, mailing, delivering, and storing the document
2) Save Time: Saves you from age-old rituals of paperwork. Going digital saves a lot of time, allowing you to focus on other essential tasks.
3) Legal Compliance: Electronic signatures are legally binded and acceptable all over the world.
4) Mobility: A significant advantage of eSignatures is helping businesses function irrespective of location & time.

  How can I eSign documents for free?

Follow these simple steps to eSign a document for free:

Step 1: Click LunarPen to open a free account
Step 2: Create or upload a document using templates, Google Drive & Dropbox
Step 3: Use the signed document sharing feature
Step 5: Send the document for signature
Step 6: Use the LunarPen interface to esign your documents for free
Step 7: Receive signed documents by email

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

Are Electronic Signatures Valid in New York?

The Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) has been adopted by most of the United States. However, two states – Illinois and New York – have not done so.

This fact has led some to worry about the validity of electronic signatures in these states, particularly in New York, which is the home of the hub of New York City. However, instead of UETA, both Illinois and New York State have adopted their own statutes regarding electronic signatures.

Electronic Signatures and Records Act (ESRA)

In New York, this statue is the Electronic Signatures and Records Act (ESRA). In essence, this law establishes that electronic signatures have the same legal validity as handwritten signatures.

It also confirms that these signatures are admissible in a court of law, as long as they comply with all other rules related to the evidence in question. There is no requirement of using electronic signatures, but it allows its usage is preferred.

However, as with UETA, ESRA does not apply to certain documents. These include documents such as wills and trusts, as well as DNR orders, health care proxies, and documents that grant one person power of attorney over another.

It should be kept in mind that the ESRA can be used to donate organs to the New York State Donate Life Registry for Organ and Tissue Donations. This creates an exception to the provision in the ESRA, which bars the use of electronic signatures to “dispose of an individual’s person or property upon death.”

The ESRA has also resulted in the creation of an ‘electronic facilitator’ in the state’s Office of Information Technology Services (ITS). This role is responsible for making the rules and regulations surrounding electronic signatures in New York State widely known among the private and public sectors. Other responsibilities include developing guidelines and standards around the use of electronic signatures, providing up-to-date information regarding the same via the Internet, and more.

Other Guidelines Relating to Electronic Signatures in New York

Aside from the ESRA, New York States must also comply with the guidelines set out in the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce (ESIGN) Act.

The ESIGN Act is a federal law that governs the entirety of the United States. This differentiates from UETA, which must first be adopted by each state before it is a law.

The ESIGN Act validates the use of electronic records and signatures regarding transactions relating to interstate and foreign trade. This act means that electronic signatures and contracts cannot be deemed illegal solely because it is in electronic and not manual form. Furthermore, it establishes that a contract cannot be denied legality solely because it involves using an electronic signature or electronic record.

Per the ESIGN Act, to supersede this act, a state must either adopt UETA or specify an alternative law that regulates and allows the use of electronic records and electronic signatures. This law must be consistent with the ESIGN Act and cannot require or give greater legal protection to technical specifications and specific technology.

Conclusion:

Thus, while New York State has not adopted UETA, thanks to the combined forces of the ESIGN Act and the ESRA, the use of electronic signatures is still valid in the state.

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments
25
Dec
2020

SEC Adopts Rule Amendments Permitting the Use of Electronic Signatures in Electronic Filings

On November 20th, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted a rule intended to modernize its operations. This rule is an amendment to the existing Rule 302(b) of Regulation S-T and is intended to provide greater flexibility for SEC filings.

This is done by permitting the use of electronic signatures in authentication documents.

Furthermore, the SEC has also amended its Rules of Practice. This amendment requires that people involved with administrative proceedings file and serve any documents electronically.

As currently written, Rule 302(b) of Regulation S-T requires that all signatories involved with an electronic filing manually sign an authentication document to authenticate the signature associated with the filing in question. This authentication document must then be retained by the person filing the document for five years. If requested by the SEC, it must be furnished to the Commission.

However, the Covid-19 pandemic has made obtaining manual signatures more complicated than initially conceived. Furthermore, electronic signature technology has also improved since the formulation of the rule. Due to these factors, the amended rule now allows signatories to electronic filings to sign an authentication document via an e-signature.

Per the amendment, if a signatory wishes to sign via an e-signature, they must:

  • Present a credential that authenticates their identity. This credential can be physical, logical, or digital, as convenient.
  • Reasonably provide for non-repudiation of the signature.
  • Provide the signature be logically associated (via attachment, affixation, or other means) with the document or signature page that is being signed. Doing so will provide the signatory with an opportunity to review the document before signing, as well as notice of the nature and substance of the document being signed.
  • Include a timestamp that will record the date and timestamp of the signature. This is as SEC rules still require the document to have been signed before or at the time when the electronic filing is made with the Commission.

Additionally, before using electronic signatures in order to execute documents meant to be filed with the Commission, the signatory must first manually sign a document. This document attests that agree using their electronic signature in such a manner is the legal equivalent of using their manual signature.

The signatory must retain this attestation document for at least seven years after the most recent authentication document that has been electronically signed. They must also be able to provide it to the Commission upon request.

All other requirements associated with Rule 302(b) will remain unchanged. These include the existing conditions that the filer retains a copy of the authentication document for a period of five years after the filing, as previously mentioned.

The amendments to the SEC’s Rules of Practice include requiring service of documents and electronic filings in relation to administrative proceedings. Furthermore, they require that sensitive information be redacted from many such documents before filing with the SEC.

These amendments become effective within 30 days of the SEC’s release in the Federal Register. However, compliance is not required until April 12th, 2021. Furthermore, following this date, there will also be a 90-day phase-in period allowed for.

Sources:

 

Posted by Lunar Pen in eSignaure Law, 0 comments