In a world where technology ensures immediate delivery of nearly everything, paperless documents and e-Signatures are quickly becoming the new norm. e-Signatures have recently experienced significant growth in adoption rates among financial institutions. Members have a hard time waiting for Amazon's two-day shipping, let alone having to make a special trip to the credit union to sign a document. As your members become more reliant upon technology to simplify their lives, they will be demanding more of your services and e-Signature is one way to ensure that you are meeting their needs. Here are 5 reasons why your credit union needs to offer e-signatures:

1)  Cut Document Errors - Forbes Insights stated, "Inability to confirm that forms have been signed by appropriate parties can lead to auditing or compliance issues. 55% of business leaders say they can't tell whether documents have been viewed, reviewed or signed by the appropriate people. 46% say they aren't sure they have copies of all signed agreements and 36% have stated that agreements are missing signatures, initials or dates, or have been signed by the wrong person".¹

2)  Speed and Efficiency - The Return on Investment (ROI) for e-Signatures biggest impact is from the speed of processing for your different products, especially in the lending space. According to the Forbes Insight study, full-time equivalent (FTE) savings (a unit that indicates the workload of an employed person) associated with the elimination of manual processes (mail sorting, document handling, scanning, etc.), resulted in a 70 to 80 percent improvement in efficiencies. Error reduction was more than 50% since so many errors in financial transactions result from missing signatures on documents. e-Signatures result in a faster turnaround and a better member experience.

3)  eCommerce is the Norm - Members want it and they want it now. By "it" we mean everything. Mobile technology and demographics (the millennial mindset) have set the expectation that everything should happen in real time.

4)  Cost Savings - Not only do you stand to reduce the costs of paper and printing, the associated transportation costs of paper (mail, FedEx, etc) will benefit from e-signature. A leading diversified global insurer estimates that e-signatures save $10 per new business transaction based on eliminating paper ($2), service ($6) and scanning ($2) costs.

5)  Compliance and Security - Thanks to the ESIGN Act and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), legal compliance and security concerns once associated with e-Signature for credit unions were eliminated for many of the transactions provided to members.

Many credit unions have implemented e-Signatures for their products and services and are looking for more areas to offer it, now that they have witnessed the benefits. 

Those that haven't adopted the technology, or are only in the planning stages can lose some members to their e-Sig-enabled competition. e-Signature technology has advanced so that it should no longer be viewed as a complicated process that involves complex workflows or separate software. In fact, some credit union data processing systems have taken e-Signatures one step further by building API's with e-Sig providers so that loan documents are automatically pushed to the member and imported back into the member account following signature completion. Not only can your credit union be paperless, your members can be too. For credit unions, e-Signature is one way to simplify life for both.

 1. http://www.forbes.com/forbesinsights/adobe_e-signatures/index.html