Author; Joyce Sigler
 

There are some great pickup lines out there. Maybe the next time you run into a member of the ACT eSignature Work Group you'll hear this one: "Do you e-sign?"  

In the ever-changing realm of business processes, e-signature is more relevant than ever.  

The eSignature Work Group within ACT is busy working on availability, usability and business process improvements, and we are reaching out to insurance industry vendors, carriers and agents to help build return on investment for agencies and carriers that adopt e-sign for clients and clients of clients. 

Work group participants have been heavily engaged in variety of initiatives, including National ESIGN Day, which occurs every June 30. We have been working on the following:

• Developing consistency in offering discounts for e-signature transactions,
• Creating recommended e-signature workflow recommendations,
• Creating high-level training and troubleshooting guides,
• Developing documentation showing the return on investment of e-sign implementation, and
• Creating end-user templates for e-signature.

We are striving to provide the insurance industry with resources that can present valuable alternatives to processes that are becoming obsolete. The world is increasingly moving from the process of printing a document, signing it and returning it towards a technology-driven, much-needed agility for businesses and clients. We as an industry have got to transform our processes and workflow along with adopting new technology or we will become irrelevant with our cumbersome methods of interaction. 

The impassioned volunteers that are working on the ACT work groups feel strongly that, while systems may vary from provider to provider, consumers as well as businesses reap a multitude of benefits when agencies adopt processes that improve the ease of doing business.  

As you can see from the eSignature Work Group's initiatives listed above, we are focused on clear workflow and integration with agency systems. Part of that is our advocacy to carriers for acceptance of vendor e-signature solutions that meet UETA and ESIGN requirements as well as the demands of their own proprietary systems. We are also working to educate agents and the industry, and we are developing recommendations on the use and update of existing reference documents.  

If you're interested in seeing the resources already completed by the work group, please click here to visit the ACT eSignature webpage. Additional resources and education are being added continuously throughout this summer and fall. 

Finally, if you have any questions on ACT or the eSignature Work Group, please contact ACT's executive director at Ron.Berg@iiaba.net.