Posts Tagged ‘Electronic Signature and Records Association (ESRA)’
SPeRS 2.0
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
SPeRS 2.0 was released this week at the Electronic Signatures and Records Association (ESRA) annual meeting. SPeRS, the Standards & Procedures for Electronic Records and Signatures, provides a series of guidelines on how to implement electronic signatures and electronic transactions in general.
The SPeRS 2.0 update focuses primarily on government regulatory developments and changes affecting e-records and e-disclosures that have surfaced over the past eight years since the first version was released. This has become especially important as transactions for services such as banking, insurance, investment and health are happening more frequently on the web and regulatory changes are being made to keep pace with new technologies such as social networking, mobile devices and cloud computing. This update to SPeRS becomes critical to enable organizations to create reliable, secure and enforceable electronic transactions using a process approach such as Silanis’ e-signature process management.
At Silanis, we’ve seen the SPeRS guidelines benefit organizations of all sizes, especially as part of the acquisition or RFP process. First, it is used to evaluate and clarify their own electronic signature process management needs as they prepare to transfer their paper-based processes online. And second, to help determine whether a particular vendor or solution meets their requirements. As a drafting committee member of SPeRS and a contributor to the standards, Silanis’ solutions naturally comply with the guidelines.
SPeRS has also been leveraged by industry associations as a basis for electronic signature standards applying to more specific industry use cases and processes. Examples include the IRI (Insured Retirement Institute) and the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association). Still, many other industry associations seem to be struggling with the issue of how to promote and standardize the use of electronic signatures. While each industry has its own unique processes, the SPeRS standard is a model that can and should be leveraged across all industries.
SPeRS is a comprehensive guideline that addresses authentication & authority; consent to use electronic records and signatures; agreements, notices and disclosures; electronic-signatures; and records retention. And while the standard was drafted for Financial Services, the overall SPeRS guidelines can be quite useful to organizations in any industry – in my opinion, SPeRS would be a valuable resource for any business seeking to enable straight through processing.
This is especially true for organizations struggling to implement electronic transactions in compliance with the US Federal ESIGN law and the state UETA laws. While these laws are helpful from a legislative point of view (they establish that electronic signatures and electronic records are equivalent to their paper counterparts), they are technology-neutral and do not specify how to best meet the requirements outlined in laws and regulations covered by ESIGN and UETA. That’s where SPeRS steps in.
Categories: In the News, Industry Insights
Tags: Banking, Buckley Sandler, e-Sign, e-Sign Enterprise, e-signatures, Electronic Signature and Records Association (ESRA), electronic signatures, ESRA, Michael Laurie, Silanis, SPeRS, Standards & Procedures for Electronic Records and Signatures, Straight-through Processing, UETA
The kitchen table is out, e-sigs are in: NJ success story shared at ESRA conference
Monday, December 5th, 2011
ESRA held this year’s Electronic Signature and Records 2011 Conference in Washington, DC on November 9 – 10. I want to share one story in particular that came out of this event because it speaks to a universal theme: resistance to change. Not only did the organization in this story use e-signatures to cut their loan application and approval process from two weeks to one day – they saw their own internal resistors “fall in love” with e-signatures.
This story was presented by Heidi Kovalick, Associate Director for the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (HESAA) of New Jersey. HESAA is a state statutory supplemental student loan program that approves 28,000 loan applications per year. The issue for HESAA was simple. They happen to be in a very competitive market with other lending institutions, many of which already offered e-signatures on their loans. Although HESAA’s application was online, students still had to print all 14 pages to sign and mail it. On average, it would take HESAA two weeks to confirm if the student was approved for the loan—too long for students, who would often end up abandoning the process to go with another lender.
Abandonment rates were not the only problem. HESAA received approximately 2,000 applications per week that were sorted into 13 large mail bins. Staff had to pull each file, match it, review it and often send it back to the student applicant because of missing signatures. To meet its service standard, HESAA staff was tasked with reviewing 28 applications/hour, which gave them just over two minutes to review each application – an impossible task. The result was overtime hours on weekends, additional budget for four temps, a lot of customer complaints, and an unbelievable amount of storage space for filing cabinets.
To get onboard with e-signatures, HESAA first did a cost analysis, risk analysis and proof-of-concept trial. They rolled out Silanis e-signatures to their customers on July 14, 2011 at the peak of their loan season and within one day, e-signature adoption hit 99.9% with 335 applications e-signed. Only two of those choose to proceed on paper. Since electronic applications are now approved in minutes instead of weeks, HESAA staff no longer put in overtime hours, nor do they need temps or even filing cabinets. Customer and employee satisfaction are at an all-time high.
These results weren’t what converted the resistors though. Among those offering the greatest resistance to change were HESAA personnel concerned with meeting the lending compliance requirements. Silanis’ Process Replayer™ convinced them. It saves web screenshots and collects data about what each signer sees and does during the online signing process. Plus, the IP address of the computer is included and everything is time stamped – which has already helped HESAA protect against fraud.
“The Silanis Process Replayer actually provides better evidence than was ever possible at the kitchen table,” says Heidi Kovalick. “When students used to print applications to sign at home, we had no idea whether signers even read anything before actually signing. Now we can prove they did, and from a lender’s perspective having that proof or electronic evidence makes a world of difference from a regulatory compliance and non-repudiation standpoint.”
Categories: Customer News, In the News, Industry Insights, Silanis Events
Tags: Banking, Customers, e-Sign Enterprise, e-signatures, electronic banking, Electronic Signature and Records Association (ESRA), electronic signatures, ESRA, Events, HESAA, Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (HESAA), Silanis, Straight-through Processing
