In the world of banking and wealth management, it’s imperative to conduct a DocuSigning (electronic signing via DocuSign) face-to-face. This is a common pattern in this space where Bank Associates or Financial Advisors aim to provide white-glove service in the process of closing loans or opening new accounts. It’s also a point of confusion given the misleading DocuSign terminology of “In-Person” signing roles.
So, how do you accomplish this using the DocuSign platform?
Use Case and Solution Overview
Let’s first describe the typical use case. Bob, the owner of famous men’s clothing Bobby LaSuit clothier, has been looking to purchase a new facility to expand his clothing line production. He has already determined the total loan amount he needs, spoken with his banker, Vidya, and provided her with all the necessary information to complete an application, including his financials for the past three years, list of his assets and a pro-forma, demonstrating what growth he expects over the next 3 years and why needs to purchase the larger facility.
Vidya has entered all data into the bank’s Loan Origination System (LOS) and completed her due diligence. She is now ready to go over the final paperwork with Bob and get a signature to start the funding process. Both Bob and Vidya are quite focused on maintaining their relationship as they’ve been working together for some time, the result of which has been support from the bank for Bob from his startup days through various stages of growth.
So, on a Tuesday morning, Bob walks into his local bank branch to meet with Vidya and sign the paperwork. She sits across the table from Bob and reviews the documents with him. All seems to be in order. She then kicks off the DocuSigning process through a press of a button in her LOS. She captures an electronic signature and the system routes all documents to her and for funding.
DocuSign provides a couple of different recipient role designations that could address this scenario. Each of these roles have their intended use and consequences. The first option could be to use the DocuSign In-Person signing role. This is a fast way of getting to a solution, but a clunky method of accomplishing it as it creates a poor experience for the face-to-face interaction we have in mind. Alternately, you can embed the DocuSigning process in a custom-built application, such as the LOS in our scenario, which provides a much better user experience but requires software development efforts. Let’s review each solution further.
In-Person Signer Role
So, what is an In-Person signer role in DocuSign and what’s its intended use?
An In-Person signer role is one of the many DocuSign recipient roles that’s available both via API and the Web App interface. It can be used when both the person collecting signature and the signer are at the same physical location. So far, so good in fitting our use case.
In fact, this is the ideal setup for realtors and why DocuSign originally came up with the role. Why? Often times, realtors have assistants who may prepare paperwork for buyers in making offers for a new home purchase. The realtor, then, would visit the buyer to answer any final questions, go over the paperwork and get the signature. However, both the realtor and the realtor’s assistant just use the DocuSign Web App. What’s more, since the assistant is setting up the paperwork, he would want to notify the realtor when the paperwork is ready.
In this scenario, the assistant prepares the documents in a DocuSign Envelope via the DocuSign Web App and setup the Buyer as an In-Person signer, with the realtor as the Host. The DocuSign system, then, sends an email to the realtor as the Host. When the realtor meets with the Buyer, she brings up her email, finds the notification from DocuSign, follows the link which launches DocuSign and provides a prompt for the realtor to pass her phone, tablet or notebook computer to the Buyer to start signing.
You can read about the mechanics of how to setup an In-Person Signing on DocuSign’s Support Center.
They key here is that the realtor had to initiate the signing, and is required to be a Sender in the DocuSign system. In other words, there’s no direct way for the Buyer to start the signing. In fact, even if the Buyer wanted to sign the documents directly, he would have no way of getting to them unless the Realtor was present and able to kick off the signing.
DocuSign even provides a mobile app that helps the realtor kickoff the signing, but it still requires the realtor to start the process as the host. If you’re using nothing but the DocuSign Web App to collect data and signatures, this can be an ideal and quick solution. In fact, all that’s needed is the ability to create an initial set of DocuSign Templates to mark up where data needs to be collected from the Buyer, in this case, or other recipients and where they need to sign.
However, in our use case, Vidya is using a Loan Origination System to collect all data, track progress on the loan and generate the loan documents. To use the In-Person signing, she would then have to switch from the LOS to DocuSign to setup the In-person signing.
Assuming a DocuSign Template is used, this process leads to a poor user experience, with Vidya having to use up to three different applications to collect data, generate the loan documents, then kickoff the DocuSigning: she would collect data and generate the documents in the LOS, then save out the documents on her local desktop, log into DocuSign and import the document to apply a template and send for in-person signing, then either use the Web App or her email to kickoff the signing. All of these steps are manual that act as speed-bumps in completing the transaction. Such user experience often means Vidya and her coworkers will reject the solution, even if it helps reduce paperwork!
However, this is a very fast method of starting to use DocuSign to collect signatures and a good interim solution until a more robust method is put in place. It certainly reduces the use of paper, even if it doesn’t reduce the complexity of the transaction.
Embedded Signing
But wait! There may be a better method.
DocuSign also provides the means of embedding the complete signing experience inside another application. This is ONLY available via API (programmatically) and cannot be initiated via the DocuSign Web App.
The experience is quite unique. In our use case of Bob and Vidya, Vidya would continue to collect all data and run through her loan origination process in her bank’s LOS. When the time comes to kickoff the DocuSigning, she would simply press a button inside her LOS to the effect of “Start DocuSigning”. The LOS, in the background, generates the document as it normally would, but sends it programmatically to DocuSign to create a new transaction, what DocuSign refers to as an Envelope, and start the DocuSigning.
The programmatic call to DocuSign would also include details about Bob, including his name and email, as well as any security measures required to validate that it’s in fact Bob DeSuit who’s signing the document. Additionally, the LOS could indicate to DocuSign if there are any areas in the documents where Bob needs to sign or initial, as well as any remaining data that needs to be collected or just validated.
As all of this occurs in the background, Vidya immediately walks Bob over to a banking kiosk where she instructs Bob to enter his Business ATM Card, enter his PIN and choose to DocuSign his loan. The Kiosk would pull up the DocuSign envelope and allow Bob to complete the DocuSigning directly on the touch-screen. At the end of the signing, all documents are properly routed to Vidya and for funding. The LOS is also notified of any changes Bob made during the process.
This solution provides an added flexibility that’s not available for the In-Person signer role. Namely, if Bob gets a call, prompting him to leave the bank without signing, Vidya could initiate a change in the LOS to send an email notification to Bob’s business email so that he can complete the signing remotely.
Not only is this solution more sophisticated and robust, it’s also more user friendly. There aren’t any clunky steps that require manual intervention by Vidya. All routing of data to DocuSign to start the signing, the process of switching from a Face-to-Face to a remote email-based signing, when necessary, the notifications to all system and people after signing is fully automated. As a result, not only is the signing completed more often and in less time, the solution has a significantly higher chance of adoption within all branches of the bank.
In the end, the bank loan officers use the system more, the customer’s are satisfied that they don’t need to deal with printed documents, the bank saves on printed paper, and the overall solution ROI significantly improves as time-to-cash (funding of the loan and collecting interest) significantly increases. It’s not uncommon to see a reduction in time-to-cash or time-to-close for 75% of transaction from 7 days down to one hour.
So, which choice fits your needs best?