FHA Acceptance of E-Signatures a Major Step Towards Paperless Real Estate Transactions

Today Silanis released a statement with regards to the impact that the Federal Housing Authority's announcement on electronic signatures will have on the real estate and mortgage industries’ straight-through processing initiatives. Here is a short excerpt.

“While many mortgage lenders have been originating, closing and recording loans electronically for some time, the real-estate industry has been slower to adopt straight-through processing,” said Michael Laurie, Vice President of Strategic Development at Silanis Technology. “The recent endorsement of e-signatures by FHA, the nation’s largest mortgage insurer, should help increase adoption and bring the industry one step closer to achieving a paperless, home-buying experience.”

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How e-signing in LotusLive solves the before AND after problems of getting documents signed.

If you thought the new e-signature services for IBM LotusLive simply replaces a ball-point pen with an electronic pen, think again.  Electronic signatures have come a long way over the years. And the e-SignLive services for LotusLive are the culmination of Silanis nearly 20 years of technical innovation aimed at eliminating both the before AND after problems of getting people’s signatures in documents. 

Signing isn’t the end of a business process.

Most of us think of a signed document as the end-result of a business process or decision that enables us have or do something. We sign documents to make an offer to purchase a home, start working at a company, buy insurance, make a business decision, and so many other things. So we normally think of the delays, costs and inefficiencies associated with getting documents delivered, signed and returned by people (and chasing after them if they’re late). But once signed documents are returned, a QA process is triggered.

Correcting signed documents adds more delays and costs.

As legal records, signed documents have to be verified to ensure that people have initialled and signed in all the right places. Otherwise they aren’t valid and they put both the organization and signers at risk. If there is even a single error, the documents then must be returned to individuals for correction, and the whole cycle starts all over again. The impact on business can be significant.

In insurance, for example, between 50% and 70% of new customer applications are returned to carriers not-in-good-order. 50 t0 70%! This ‘stare and compare’ method of verifying documents adds weeks more to the cycle time and makes the applications 4 to 5 times more expensive to process.

Keeping the signing process electronic from start to finish.

e-SignLive for LotusLive cuts through the paper chase, literally. This electronic signature service makes it faster and easier to get people’s signatures in documents by keeping the process electronic from start to finish. Rather than shipping documents out to people for signing, you simply invite them into the IBM LotusLive online business collaboration and social networking environment where they can instantly view, sign and return documents electronically.

What’s more, e-SignLive better guides people through a document review and signing process so less mistakes are made in the first place. In fact, it’s impossible for people to sign or initial in the wrong places, so you don’t have to chase after people to have the documents corrected and re-signed!

Register a free 30-day trial of e-SignLive today.

Discover just how easy it is to sign documents electronically in the cloud by registering for a free 30-day trial of e-SignLive for LotusLive. Don’t worry. You don’t have to commit in any way once the trial period is over (But I’m hoping that you love it so much that you e-sign on.) You can also watch this short video that demonstrates how to prepare documents for e-signing within LotusLive and then ‘click-to-sign’ using nothing more than your mouse.

Need to automate high-volume transactions?

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The skies over Europe remain largely silent, but the sound of business deals closing doesn’t have to.

I have been touting the time-savings and cost-savings benefits of eliminating paper from the signing process for years. However, the current flight disruptions caused by Iceland’s volcanic ash is testament to how an organization’s business processes can completely grind to a halt if it still relies on air-lifting time-sensitive documents to people for signing. As the skies over Europe remain silent, business deals are not being signed and decisions are not being formally authorized.

We can’t control mother-nature, but we can fix our business processes.

Last week, I posted a couple of blogs about why you can’t compete as a global player if you’re still on paper. How today’s economic climate won’t allow organizations to continue living with the inefficiencies of paper for much longer. And why organizations soon won’t be able to imagine doing business without e-signatures. This rings especially true this week. The events over the past week remind us of how vulnerable commerce is to mother-nature and other uncontrollable events. But while we can’t control mother–nature, we can fix our broken business processes.

There’s no better time than now.

Organizations have made significant investments to optimize their operational efficiency and improve customer experience by bringing business processes online. Most of the pieces are already in place. The only thing standing in the way of keeping processes online and getting maximum return on those investments are e-signatures. The good news is that there are solutions in place today that immediately deliver these capabilities over the cloud, such as e-SignLive for LotusLive, while also making it extremely affordable for small and large organizations alike. 

Seeing (and clicking) is believing.

IBM recently posted a video demo of its newly integrated Skype, SalesForce  and e-SignLive services for LotusLive. In under 3.5 minutes, you’ll see just how easy it is to prepare a document for signing and invite people to participate in a “click-to-sign” e-signing ceremony. But clicking is truly believing. I highly recommend that you try the service for yourself by registering for a free 30-day trial. Don’t worry. You don’t have to commit in any way once the trial period is over (But I’m hoping that you love it so much that you e-sign on.)

I’d like to hear from you.

Has your organization been affected by the flight cancellations in Europe? What types of documents have you not been able to air lift? What impact has this had on your business?

 

If you could close business 50% faster than your competitors using LotusLive, how would that change your world?

That’s what Signature Mortgage expects to do by using LotusLive with new integrated e-signing capabilities. Earlier this week Silanis announced how this small regional lender based in Cantin, Ohio plans to use our e-SignLive online e-signature services for LotusLive to improve customer service and compete with large national players. By eliminating manual, paper-based processing, Signature Mortgage will be able to complete customer applications within 24 hours compared to its current 7-day track record. What’s more, the lender expects to close mortgages in two weeks versus the typical 30 to 45 days their customers have experienced with some of the larger players. A real competitive advantage indeed!

Why you soon won’t be able to do business without e-signatures.

Now I realize that I’m very biased with regards to the value provided by e-SignLive. I truly believe that integrating electronic signing capabilities within LotusLive will bring Collaborative e-Commerce to the masses by making this highly sophisticated, online platform affordable to both small and large players. And having assisted some of the world’s largest organizations including the US Army to implement Silanis’ on-premise e-signature solutions, I know what impact e-signatures have on the bottom line. So I cannot overstate their value enough.

The real-world, return-on-investment is mind-boggling.

The competitive advantage that Silanis’ electronic signatures have provided to our enterprise clients across insurance, financial services, government, and other industries have surpassed their original expectations (and frankly, why most of them won’t go on the record). But I can share these real-world figures with you:

• The US Army’s enterprise deployment of e-forms and e-signatures is expected to generate $1.3 billion in yearly hard-cost savings once fully deployed 

• A top 10 P&C insurer now completes new customer applications in 10 days vs. 52 days

• Another Top 10 P&C carrier has avoided over 20 costly court cases thanks to stronger contract evidence

• A Top 10 US Bank expects to decrease lending risks by 50% when e-signatures are added to its loan applications 

• Another insurer expects to reduce not-in-good order (NIGO) applications by 75% when e-signatures are added to its e-application 

• Stewart Title, a top 5 U.S. title company, has reduced the time to close mortgages from 90 minutes to 15 minutes
  

You can’t imagine doing business without e-mail. E-signatures will have the same impact.

Just like you can’t imagine having to run around to photocopy and hand-deliver memos to your co-workers, or courier simple business documents to your customers, partners or suppliers, one day soon you won’t be able to do business without electronic signatures. In the weeks to come, I will share my insights with regards to why eliminating manual, paper-based signing touches so many ancillary processes and areas of an organization, and the tremendous impact this has on the bottom line.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear from you.

Where do your business processes break down and fall to paper? How would staying electronic benefit your organizations? What problems would be eliminated?