An electronic signature is an efficient, legally binding way to get approval on electronic documents. Secure and verifiable, it can replace a handwritten signature in virtually any process. If you are in the insurance industry or even if you have seen it from a far end, you must have seen the endless amount of paperwork it includes: from making documents, filing them, filling them, signing them the work just doesn’t end. Therefore, insurance brokers and companies who wish to reduce some of the burden of this hectic task, have shifted to digital documents and digital signatures for insurance. E-Signature platforms offer consumers convenience and simplicity for important transactions and provide a complete, legally valid electronic record of signers, IP addresses, dates and times signed, in a much less hectic way and in a shorter span of time. To keep all sensitive information stored safely and up to legal regulations, there are secure methods implemented which are compliant with the guidelines set by ESIGN Act, UETA, and eIDAS and that make the e-signatures valid. There are a lot of online sites available that can be your e-signature solutions for insurance and provide you with easy access to digital signatures for insurance.
While there may be a lot of benefits and perks of e-signatures being introduced into the insurance industry, we shall discuss a few of them below:
- Convenience of Clients Increases: While filing, filling and signing documents and maintaining a proper record of them without misplacing or hampering them could be a very tedious task, doing all this work digitally with digital signature on these documents increases consumer convenience to a large amount. This also saves a lot of time for the consumer and helps them in maintaining easy records of their documents digitally.
- Increased Employee Efficiency: With the introduction of e-signature and digital documentation, the workload of employees decreases to a large amount. It also becomes easy for them to maintain customer records without the headache of the paperwork and also saves a lot of time which in turn increases employee efficiency and productivity timesfold. The margin of human error also decreases to a large extent that builds customer trust in the company.
- Increased Revenue and an Eco-Friendly Environment: E-signatures, as already mentioned above, save a lot of time and increase employee efficiency by decreasing the chances of human error and are also very cost-efficient since the entire cost of including paper, pen and other stationery is completely reduced. Decreased cost of production and increased customer satisfaction helps in increasing the revenues of the company to a large extent. Reduced paperwork also provides a eco-friendly environment to the complete working place and helps in image formation of the same.
- Legally Accepted and Enforceable: Although these measures have been into the scene from decades but their use was neither very trusted nor very frequent until very recently. Since there were not many rules and laws related to e-signatures, people hesitated to place their trust in the same. Adoption of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act or UETA in many states and with the passage of Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act or ESIGN at the federal level in 2000 solidified the legal trust people had while using electronic records and electronic signatures in commerce. ESIGN and UETA, both establish that electronic records and signatures carry the same weight and legal effect as traditional paper documents and handwritten signatures.
- Enhanced Security and Privacy of Customers: E-signatures are undoubtedly way more secure than paper documents since they cannot be accessed by anybody who is not on the server or people who are not authorised to do the same. The data in the digital documents cannot be easily hampered with and it remains secure on the web. The privacy of customers is thoroughly maintained. Users may be required to provide a password, confirm an SMS message, or answer questions based on public records to establish identity which makes the system even more secure.
- Can Keep You Ahead of Competitors: Although the use of e-signatures have increased tremendously over the past few years, there are still a lot of companies that do not use e-signatures or digital documentation. Using e-signature as your mode of working can keep you ahead of your competitors and can also allow you to take your business online where your sales can increase and so can your revenues.
Conclusion
E-signatures have only proved helpful and very efficient in the insurance industry and have facilitated major development in the same over the past few years. Over the years, the use of digital signatures for insurance will only increase and become more secure and trustworthy, if abided by the law.
