How Electronic Signatures Benefit the Finance Sector

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1) Streamline client onboarding

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

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

2) Make daily operations simpler

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

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

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

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

3) Get full benefits of a paperless organization

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

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

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

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

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

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

4) Ensure top benefits for financial institutions

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

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

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

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

5) Achieve excellent business efficiency

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

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

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

6) Improves customer satisfaction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

7) Increases security and safety of documents

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

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

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

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

Case Study

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

Challenge

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

The Pain Point

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

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

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

Solution

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusion

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

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