eSignature Legality for Sales in European Union - Simplify Your Document Signing Process

How to eSign a document: e-signature legality for Sales in European Union

hello and welcome to today's webinar e signatures in Europe understanding the new regulation and how it can help your business I'm Teresa Ric director of webinars here at aim name is your host and producer of our event with me today are Barr Steven Mason and your glance from Kofa Kofa is the underwriter of today's webinar and we thank them for their support and thank you for taking the time to join us today and before we get started I just want to offer a few pointers for viewing today's webinar by joining our webinars live you can customize your own viewing experience so feel free to open and close or resize the different windows that that are on your screen today across the bottom of your screen is a list of all of the widgets that are available to you um you can download a PDF of the presentation at any time just look to the resources list that's to the right side um of that slide area feel free to ask questions throughout the hour using the Q and a feature now we'll hold these questions until the end where we should have about five or 10 minutes to answer them and and we'll do our best to get to as many of those questions as we can in in that time that we have allotted at the end of the webinar hour this webinar is being recorded and it will be posted to a.org webinars on demand library in just a few days our discussion today will provide an introductory overview of the updated regulations pertaining to e signatures across the EU a companion piece to today's webinar is a white paper authored by our chief analyst Bob lvy and the link to download that paper is in the resources list um again that's to the right side of your slide area but also in that resources list are links to several other very helpful and informative pieces for you to read so please take advantage of those resources and click on those links while you're online today now I'd like to introduce our speakers today Stephen Mason is a barister and the author of electronic signatures in in law and he's also the editor of El electronic evidence and both of those are in the Third Edition published in 2012 Stephen is the recognized Authority on electronic signatures and electronic evidence and he has assisted governments in relation to those areas um governments in China the Middle East Central America as well as businesses in the United States Europe and Africa and we also have with us jur lent and jur is the product marketing manager for emia at lexark Enterprise software and part of the signature professionals team for the former soft Pro Group which was acquired by kofax in 2014 York has 16 years of experience in digital transformation and a particular deep understanding of e signatures and signature verification processes he was and is heavily involved in the evolution of the corresponding products kofax docine and kofax fraud 1day he facilitates the synergies of those signature products with other lexark Solutions with a particular focus on emia and so we also wanted to open our webinar today with a little poll to you in the audience so uh come over to your screens right now and um we want to get uh your feedback right now on what have you done in the last two weeks uh regarding um have you signed a device on a courier service to acknowledge receipt of a parcel have you signed on a tablet at the point of sale um have you purchased something over the web like flights holidays books um have you agreed to terms of license when downloading software on the web um agreeing to employment buying and selling both goods and services via email you can check as many of those um as are appropriate and just which of these types of transactions have you personally done in the last two weeks and so go ahead and take a look here at how you're responding to this and um Stephen um if I can ask you to join in here and and um just to comment on are these the typical types of transactions that you see most people making um and just what the Common Thread is amongst all of this um well now what um this is going to be very embarrassing but it's not embarrassing for Teresa it's embarrassing for me uh and that is I'm not able to see that and and it could be because I'm clicking on the wrong button which I sincerely apologize to everybody to right now because Theresa has taken great ATT um um uh methods of making sure I understand how this software Works Theresa can you help me please most certainly most certainly we're seeing about 55% of the respondents are saying that they've signed on the device for The Courier Service about 27% have signed on the tablet for point of sale 92% of our respondents are saying that they've purchased something over the web um 80% said they've agreed to the terms of Licensing and 22% of said that they've agreed to employment or buying and selling via email thank you very much indeed Teresa that's much appreciated uh and frankly it does not surprise me about the buying on the internet um what is interesting I think um and i' be intered in York's view on this is that buying on the Internet is prevalent mostly in um the USA and UK um rather than in some uh what I uh would call sort of if I was a lawyer civil law countries uh where there's there's a bit more reticence of buying on the internet okay well Stephen let me go ahead and turn the slide presentation over to you to begin your main discussion today thank you thank you very much Theresa and I thank aim and kofax uh for asking me to speak today it's much appreciated now for everybody attending um I'm not going to be looking directly in any detail at the regulation that the European Union has passed and will take effect as from the 6th of July um what I'm going to look at are some more basic issues about um evidence and proof and this will hopefully then uh for those people attending this webinar will uh put the into context what y will be speaking on after I finished um so let me take you on um a bit of a a ride we we've already established that we use electronic signatures every day um from a personal point of view um we vast majority of us as uh the questionnaire has demonstrated is we buy flight and holidays and Shop over the Internet um we also use credit cards and debit cards at ATMs and point of sale now typing your number into a credit or debit card uh is uh an a one version of electronic signature as is putting a squiggle or a cross into a handheld device when accepting a parcel uh it'll be interesting to know how many people attempt to write their signature but certainly under English law and also American law if you even if you only put a cross in in that box that suffices as a signature um then we have the organization itself and a lot of people here obviously are on behalf of their organizations to to um assess the use of electronic signatures um generally and certainly I noticed in the United States of America from the case law that um quite a lot of companies do enter into contracts with employees either over the Internet or sometimes by exchange of emails um so certainly the obviously one might um sign off projects internally um it could be by a system or by exchangeable emails also approving invoices approving expenses uh in fact there's one um interesting case in England and Wales from 1997 which dealt with the approving of expenses by exchange of email and this occurred in 1997 and the uh chairman of the industrial tribunal as they were then called decided that the signatures on the bottom of bottom of an email actually changed the contract terms of the written contract which was a correct decision um so um certainly in a lot of the talks I give across the world and when I discuss electronic signatures across the world with lots of people there's a great deal of confusion about electronic signatures not only coming from people who are not lawyers but most lawyers are very confused about electronic signatures and please forgive me for those lawyers that are listening in that are not confused uh you are in the minority um the problem is most of us really don't know what an electronic signature is but as I pointing out here they are easy but why is this important well um certainly in the in the concept of the business um deciding which form of electronic things you use means that you've got to think about a certain number of um issues uh that arise um and you've got to balance the evidential weight against the operational requirements you've got to obviously decide what is the best for the actual business process itself so one not one should not worry about the technology or what sort of electronic signature you use uh until you understand the actual business process first and another aspect of course is how the customer is going to react because uh different customers will re act in different ways uh in different countries um certainly to to to my um understanding having conducted a number of cross-jurisdictional studies for various organizations so why do we use a signature uh it's an interesting point because um normally before well before the internet uh we didn't think in terms of electronic signatures we we knew what a or we do know what an electronic what a signature look like it's a manuscript signature we uh literally sign usually on a piece of paper um and we reproduce our signature quite easily however in the electronic environment suddenly um you've got to prove somebody intended to enter the contract um that or prove that somebody made a promise and and there's a good reason uh for using a signature uh there are a whole range of reasons but the primary purpose is to prove that the signatur not only approves but also adopts the content of the document and also that the content will be binding so a good example is when we buy an airline ticket we're asked to click the little box saying we accept the terms and conditions no doubt most of us do not read them uh because we know this almost pointless uh because we can't change them anyway um and if we did download them and read them it might s us asleep uh perhaps we we might need that there's also a secondary purpose though and that is to authenticate the identity of the person it doesn't follow that you actually do succeed in that because if you don't carry out the proper um uh substantive um Research into whether the person signing is the person who they say they are but it is possible um especially if you go to a country like Italy for instance where notary will be the person who actually draws up a commercial contract between two um companies and one single copy will exist but the notary will be required to establish the identity of the people very clearly who sign it and also uh we want to establish that the content of document has not been altered subsequently to the affixing of the signature and that's slightly easier um when it comes to a paper document but obviously could be in theory more complex within electronic documents now it depends on which sort of signature you use naturally if you just exchange emails between parties and you just type your name at the bottom of an email then we all know that uh the emails can be altered changed without perhaps you noticing it and so somebody could be committing um you to a higher price than you would prefer uh improperly whereas if one uses a digital signature which is encrypted then the likelihood of detecting A Change Is much much higher as we know there's also the record keeping purpose which has become U more predominant now I think um of recent um especially with uh the requirements of governments to retain uh documents for much much longer periods of time these are only um some of the reasons um I have a bit more of a longer list there if you care to to go and have a look so what about the forms of electronic signature well um already uh we've established with the little short questionnaire uh that you're now aware there are different types of signature typing your name into an email or a document the first um case of this actually was in America in about 1990 or thereabouts when um an American insurer wanted to type his name into a Word document and the American Insurance Bureau went to court to establish with a judge whether or not that would be a signature which it was and that was well before the eign Act was passed and um as you can see on the um board here I've given you a list of examples in law where typing a name either into an email or a Word document has been held to be a form of electronic signature and as you can see it covers quite a wide range we are obviously are clicking when we click the I accept or the I agree icon that is another form of electronic signature as with the p um uh the scan signature is a great one um I do love receiving people's emails where they've attached a PDF of a scan signature because then in theory it allows me to use that signature for any other purpose I choose to use uh not withstanding the fact that um um I wouldn't do it uh I it it's it's quite amusing to see that happening um a biometric measurement is where um you might there are a number of products on the market now as we know where you um have a pen which is connected to a computer and a pad which is in turn attached to a computer and you sign your name and your signature comes up on the screen I think yor is going to discuss that in slightly more detail but that is another mechanism obviously we can use a digital signature and under the regulations and the European Union directive there are three different types which are not going to go into that's far too complex and also an electronic sound in theory an electronic sound sound can be used and in fact there is one case in the United States of America where an electronic sound where somebody said yes in answer to a question over the telephone uh as to whether or not they accepted entering into a contract was considered to be an electronic signature by a judge and last but not least the name in an email address there have been a number of cases across the globe where uh people have exchange emails for various purposes usually entering contracts and one party then challenges something um and uh invariably um one sometimes forgets to sign an email and a question for the judge is whether when you've got a series of emails that been exchanged between the parties uh whether um the email address uh can constitute a signature and that has held been held the case in a number of jurisdictions across the globe so then we come on to evidence because I think evidence is is fundamentally important because um you can rely on the signature but you've got to obviously prove the issue of um first of all if somebody did click on it and if they did did they intend to so we obviously all use electronic documents to conduct business every day now it's it's just regular um but um there is a perception that contracts do not appear to be as valid or cannot be relied upon uh as if they're in uh electronic format this is incorrect uh they can be and are relied on across the globe now in every jurisdiction but nevertheless there is this perception uh the point is we enter contracts every day and we use electronic signatures every day what usually matters though of course if something goes wrong is whether or not we can prove we entered into a contract to re enforce our rights and there are some jurisdictions where actually uh you cannot enter into some types of contract electronically I'm not going to discuss those but um the example one example would be uh signing a will for instance uh and that's held generally speaking uh not to be permissible having said that a number of jurisdictions have allowed Wills to be signed electronically and they are valid so what the sort of practical issues have we got well first of all in some jurisdictions the actual format that electronic signature takes is not relevant and two examples or a number of examples are Australia New Zealand uh the UK uh the United States of America Canada and so on and so forth however there are some jurisdictions where the format of the signature is crucially important I'm not going into that but one must must be aware of that when you're dealing with cross jurisdictional issues so where you rely on the electronic signature and the other person denies using it the burden of reprove remains as for manuscript signatures and that is the party relying on the signature must prove the signature is not a forgery nothing has changed from the paper world and of course the problem that affects every form of electronic is you as a recipient do not necessarily know whether the signature was affixed to the email or document or the pin was used by the person whose signature it reports to be uh these are significant problems or can be I think most of them are problems in theory rather than in practice so what about the relying party if you rely on a signature you are the relying party so you've got to ask yourself as a relying party uh if you have sufficient evidence in place to rely on the signature and of course if a dispute occurs you've got to think about how to prove the Nexus between the application of the signature whatever the form it takes and the person whose signature it reports to be so if we take digital signatures as an example there are a number of Russian cases where uh companies use electronic banking and um they have to use digital signatures if they're doing Electronic Banking by um law and also by requirement of the bank and about seven companies have taken legal action in Russia over the last 10 years to recover monies because um a thief has either obtained the private key or and the password and then transer enormous amounts of money into the Thieves account um and the highest amount that was stolen was 82 million Rubles which is a considerable amount of money so even digital signatures are prone to be being attacked in this way and the point is no form of electronic signature uh proves the user caused the signature to be affixed so let's look at the European legislation very quickly there it is um the directive from 1999 um is officially appealed um as from the 1st of July this year and the regulation takes over for those of you who are not familiar with this um a regulation is directly applicable in every member state of the European Union which means that um now the law is exactly the same is identical in every European Union member State uh for those who are familiar with the European Union if you issue a directive then each member state has to enact its own legislation to put the directive into effect which has meant there has been some confusion across European Union member states and has caused some anxiety for some uh big multinationals quite understandably I'm not going to deal with this in depth uh because yor is going to look at it slight slightly more um but I would say with my next slide uh we have um three um uh Clauses here 10 11 and 12 which set out the three different types of electronic signature now the interesting thing just to go back slightly to the point that I made earlier where it depends on the jurisdiction as to what sort of signature is valid in the US the UK Australia New Zealand U Canada the form of signature is irrelevant what is relevant for a judge is whether or not something was signed and if there's some evidence to demonstrate a document was signed then that's sufficient however in other jurisdictions uh the actual type of electronic signature used can be very important and so when dealing with cross-jurisdictional uh contracts one has to bear this in mind so how do we trust the signature well when we rely on document whatever sort of document it is we need to be satisfied that everything is in order uh so for instance if you enter a contract you'll need to ensure you have got you're satisfied with a number things obviously whether if it's a natural person whether they are who they say they are or whether the legal entity is who they say they are and one must double check that because there has been a considerable amount of fraud on that basis uh mostly in the USA at the moment but I'm sure uh that fraud will come to Europe pretty quickly also and I'm sure some of the people um listening and taking part in this we webinar will know that sometimes the person signing the contract may not be who they say they are again it's something that one needs to establish before one enters into contract which is legally binding and of course the person signing the contract needs to have the authority to bind the company for which they're signing um so in essence there is no difference between the physical world and the electronic World in this respect now for those of you who might be interested um Timothy Riner and I wrote a paper about trust between machines um which is uh there's a there's a hyperlink there to the article um if you're interested please feel free to download that um and any comments on that would be really greatly appreciated so um as a lawyer I would say to you what you really need is evidence don't worry quite so much about the form of signature using unless it's important for the jurisdiction you're dealing with but you've got to look at the evidence um surrounding um the signature and the signing process to establish whether you're satisfied that um the probability is that you will succeed in the court of law now there are quite a lot of number of of cases uh dealing with electronic signatures um the United States has generated quite a lot of very useful examples um and if one just looks at the employment um aspect of electronic signatures often what hinges is not whether somebody signed a document or not but whether um the evidence is there to prove that they entered into the contract and also if one looks at Contract disputes it's rarely um whether or not the contract was entered and whether both parties signed with electronic signatures which is its issue it's normally whether or not uh somebody actually uh when entering the contract actually carried out their side of the bargain effectively uh so electronic signatures actually are quite a low priority for contract disputes so from the perspective of proof we've got to think of a number of issues and I've got a list here these these are not um um a complete list uh but these are some of the things that one has to think about and no doubt um for those lawyers that are are listening uh you will be familiar with this and can easily add to this list I'm going to give you now so we have to to go back on the ear earlier Point we've got to verify that the signatur is who they say they are in other words confirm that a person with a particular set of identity characteristics exists so um uh Joe from Cincinnati claims that he is the CEO of ABC Lim um Incorporated and he wants to enter into a contract with Jane of um BCD Limited in um in Bolton in Lan Lancashire in England um both might have actually exchanged a lot of emails um and found each other on the internet never have met with each other so each have got to be satisfied uh by the evidence that they can be made available both online and physically as to whether or not the other exists uh and and um it's interesting certainly in personal relationships how little that happens but in business relationships it's it's crucial as we know then we got to think about the forgery of documents because when I wrote the first edition of my book on electronic evidence in 2007 it was published in 2007 the one question I asked myself was this in the days of the physical world uh we would all be in big offices there would be massive numbers of filing cabinets and paper would be stuffed into filing cabinets in order so in order for us to to when a dispute comes along to to doctor the documents uh would have been very difficult we couldn't have taken them we couldn't have stol them we couldn't have really uh uh altered them without being noticed by somebody in the office but now literally every employee has got a chunk of the company on their personal computer or their smartphone and it is quite easy to to forge or alter documents and I predicted in 2007 that the number of cases which were about three or four in England uh in 300 years would increase enormously and that has happened uh courts now across the globe are seeing a regular occurrence of forg documents or Al documents in legal proceedings so one must must have to be aware of those sorts of things and naturally the system that used used to capture the signature has to be sufficiently robust to link the sign sign to the document and that's where um certainly in a lot of the US cases uh there it's very rarely challenged because most of the US cases for instance uh have demonstrated that the employment contract has been signed and so that becomes a non-issue one of the issues that may arise is whether or not the employee was aware of an arbitration clause and if not then maybe uh the actual contract will not be valid uh but that's a separate issue to the signature process having said that there are a number of cases uh where the employers have failed to put in a proper uh mechanism to ensure they can capture record and lay down clear evidence of the signature process uh and so this is an issue that one must take care of so let's um finish off with what um we ought to do and that is next steps uh I just jumped to P the page there let me go back right there we are it came up very slowly so um assessing what part of the business or process would benefit from the use of electronic signatures that's the first thing certainly internally arguably um one could do that quite swiftly but one has to look at the issues what sort of document do you want signing is it necessary or appropriate um high value uh documents might not need electronic signature and maybe should never be signed with electronic signature um so when to think about that equation um obviously it's worth analyzing the risk for different types of electronic signature you can overdo it you can underdo it um and it's certainly worth including an analysis of the reliability and integrity of the it system this is actually crucial in my view from a from a a proof point of view and last but not least one has to think about long-term storage especially for instance nuclear or insurance but your particular uh industry which you know better than I do uh May well require uh long-term storage and it's something that you should take into effect when you put in an electronic s system electronic signature system so with that I shall say thank you very much and hand over to Teresa who will take the matter from this point onwards thank you thank you Stephen and uh just have Stephen's URL out there for just a moment and um before we continue to listen to to y's part of the presentation we just wanted to ask you for another poll so come on back up to your computer screens and um we have this question for you right now um which business um processes are you most interested um to further automate with eatures um things like customer on boarding change requests internal approvals human resource processes e-contracting you can select multiple options here so I'm just going to give you just a moment to select your answer ERS here um and let me go ahead and just uh take a look at the results and I'm um uh uh yur I'm going to ask you just to join in here and to give us your feedback on what we're seeing the with the results here ah I can see great so hopefully we can all see them and uh it's also interesting with regards to the results that receive it's internal approvals of something like close to 2third customer on boarding is one of the issues on customer experience is closely related to it and the new regulation deals with remote customer on boarding primarily so well Steven was setting the scene for what we should look at and that this evidential weight that we should look for and evidence is what it matters um he also had the perspective that please have a look on your particular business process and so we look on com on aspects such as custom customer on boarding and erron tracting in uh particular in the upcoming slides deck so Teresa if I should take on from here from what we've prepared for the part two of the session so I think I can click on from now good I'll kick off from here and uh some sort of quick look into the particular business process really makes sense so you should make kind of an an assessment of what you're currently doing and what you intend to do so with regards to getting away from paper processes the invite for this webinar was that 45% of people are still keeping signatures on papers with wet ink and uh they do need to understand in what kind of business process am I looking for an improvement and where is the Evas impact of this particular EU regulation really kicking in it's in the section of yeah who actually are you is it Steph Mason that I'm talking to and is it Steven Mason that wants to sign a contract so it's the identification and the authentication step of a business process it's not just a pure signing creation and the method of signing it's also that you exactly know who it is that is signing and So within the customer onboarding process if you are in a face-to-face process this IDE ID verification typically happens if you are just passing a governmen issued ID and do a visual verification some companies are providing services for that and um if you want to sign up a new customer remotely this is exactly whereas kicks in and we'll have a closer look on that one in the next slides so in order to understand what your business process is all about you may face the situation that you have a face to-face scenario and it's not necessarily only in Branch it could be also in the field think about it Telco company we have within this webinar primarily people registering from banking insurance and Telos and they obviously are looking for Alternatives in the customer onboarding process if you sign up for a phone contract Telos have to apply a kyc know your customer and typically this is executed in a lot of countries that physical IDs are just photocopied in a shop or maybe even throughout the in Mobile scenario have you ever applied for a SIM card remotely well Aid via AAS is an opportunity for that a banking scenario customer on boarding uh remotely is also something that is open bya various ways now through these new regulations so it's not just the signing process only it's the identification process that matters as well and this is once again another point where I'd like to point over to Teresa once more and if we could kick up another poll to get um tap on your interest your particular interest in that section um Teresa would you like to take over for a minute most certainly and in the interest of time we're going to go kind of quickly through this poll um in which environments do you eign already or want to do so in the near future are you looking for in-person processes where the company representative is present or self-service processes or both and just select one of those and um we're seeing results that I'm seeing here more on the self side expected so on the self-service and on the remote side and this is exactly where this regulation kicks in um the in-person processes are not some that need to be neglected so you can see that 61% 23 are interested actually in both and just about 38% exclusively on the self-service so in order to understand those two different areas uh there are various ways of signing that you typically intend to use so while if you are in a face-to-face situation eids have been rolled out in Spain in Germany in the Netherlands in many other European countries I don't think so that they have been rolled out in the UK very successfully Steven but um in various countries they have been rolled out but not a lot of people are using them especially not in a face-to-face situation so you will have to have a platform for your signing process that actually deals with both so that's one of the first takeaways the next takeaway is that when you look on your signer ID verification in a face-to-face scenario it's I'm showing my passport I'm showing my driver's license I'm showing my ID document in a remote physical uh nonphysical presence situation this ID check can be done with Eid an electronic identification with certificate based on a card and a card reader but that approach has not been very successful so video conferencing ID Sim ID these are the components that you will need to keep in mind as a solution Arch that may play an important role for the solution for your digital transformation process and if we look on those three different types of e signatures let's say these 10 minutes in the webinar that I am given now are a very bit short in order to dig into the various details that's why we've created a white paper together with I'm to dig into this on the first level uh the surprising aspect um in many situations we are signing not because there is a law or not because there is a regulation or something like that we just sign as we want to have something to have yeah in case of doubt we want to have a proof of evidence a form a legal proof of intent and that the thing that resides on the right hand side the qualified electronic signature is explicitly just required in a very few but some important cases so let's have a look into this section A Little Bit Closer the first surprising aspect if you do your research on what you can actually do in form free environment where you are not required to design dour but you will do it defo currently maybe on wet ink um if you reflect your industry if you'll find yourself reflected in this the white paper covers various of best practice approaches in this segment and so this is kind of a list of where electronic signatures apart from qualified electronic signatures are already in use in the European Union successfully today when those particular laws and regulations and directives around 1997 1999 were written almost all of those Concepts had in mind to replace the handwritten signature and not to embed this into a digital process so if one of your last experiences of e signing was that you were signing to receive a courier services parcel you may be surprised that you can really take handwritten signature seriously even if you have some aspects in mind that it's not just the image only that there may be some other aspects like so-called dynamic or biometric signals that you can capture throughout the writing process so there are options also to start this digital transformation process in a very human method and it's not the graphologist that looks into a signature in a verification process those folks are forensic experts they look into that stuff and if you are wondering what is the requirement to take a handwritten signature series that may be combined with digital signatures something that is executed in many many millions of transactions in the European Community every month we explain those details in the white paper then for example uh if you're signing with a finger that may be okay if you want to have additional evidential weight you may consider using specific stylist specific technologies that are around so it's not only the signature pad connected to a PC that Stephen was mentioning today as we are moving gradually in a more and more Mobile World we also have the opportunity to sign trustworthy using smartphones or tablets and it depends on your business process what you actually require so if it's just let's say on a very low risk level um if there are other processes related to it for example if you take time stamps or uh GPS coordinates it's evidence that matters so you do not necessarily need to go for biometric signatures in all cases if you want to digitize H written signatures and want to achieve that someone is signing with confidence we started this conversation with Stephen where he just said well there are some situations when I personally would prefer to sign on paper not because of any legal aspects just personally it's makes me feel more confident so it's nothing legal it's nothing technical it's a social and emotional aspect and so if you want to have that sort of no questions asked approach you might consider to look for yeah not signing with a finger but maybe to use also a method where the digital ink looks almost in a similar way like the wet ink and that the display surface resembles a little bit the signing on paper why does this matter around the current regulation what's the impact act around that one well we'll see a shift in the interest in Europe towards the idea of the advanced electronic signature and um there has been misunderstandings quite a lot with the interpretation what this actually is and in the various laws of the European Community you see them reflected in a different way now with the regulation there is at least a similar terminology across Europe and that's a good aspect we can start our conversation on a similar level do you really need to read all those details well the thing that key takeway is it's authenticity and its Integrity that you should be looking for and how are vendors providing things such as these so how are Concepts built up for such uh approaches and this is where Biometrics meet cryptography so it's nothing like a yeah can I choose either a biometric signature or a digital signature the ideal Concepts combine both and this is just a on a very high level a little look into what are the building blocks the components to achieve a trustworthy approach in Italy for example you will see that sort of approach reflected as Firma graca and um this is very popular due to the fact that there even has been a technical regulation and several companies have been very very successful in digitizing lot of wet ink signature processes especially in the last two and a half years so if we have another look on what are the security aspects can I trust that sort of approach is it as trustworthy as a purely qualified electronic signature approach well if you look into the components as someone who's a security expert then you will realize that let's say the algorithms used and a technical approach is not that far away from what is done around qualified electronic signatures so the only different aspect is there is no third party trusted provider involved so in cases where you are free to choose your personal approach but you want to have a specific focus on security trustworthiness these are approaches that matter and there are two other things to keep in mind it's important that independent of the vendor you are a to verify the Integrity of a particular document and the other aspect maybe that you do not want to show up this process as something that is executed by assigning service you want to have this as a service embedded in your own process so here for solution architects who is it typically that a customer is trusting in an onboarding process a bank an insurance company a Telco it's the particular Bank typically and it's not where a thirdparty signing service should pop up and is involved in that stage so it's typically an embedded process we'll have a quick sneak view in the white paper we're covering here various e signature examples and uh we'll pick two of those and have this within just 20 seconds only for all of these quick snapshots there are insurance companies uh that have rolled out this one embedded in their processes so very often you'll find that stuff as an embedded feature you can receive those slides as PDF from I'm or from myself later on so you do not have to read through you just ought to know in the white paper itself in the slide there is material where you can dig in one of the most popular aspects now is if this is something that is executed in field and may even also include inperson signing you will have to keep in mind that you require also something that works offline the paper savings have been proved the ROI the customer satisfaction so the proof points are there and you can learn for your own project if you Embark from that section so we'll skip the Asian approach and dig into the next round with uh Teresa once more so I'm handing over to Teresa thank you jur um and we've been listening to J Lance and for that we were listening to Stephen Mason and and I know um jur took a very high level approach of discussing those customer examples but again when you you can download a copy of the slides just to read you know more detail of what he has in here and certainly download a copy of the white paper and let me just put that information up here on the screen for you um and for those of you who are who are on here live with us just go to the right of your slide area you can download this white paper that was referencing um the E signatures in Europe paper that has just been published week by aim and so it's an excellent uh paper with a lot more detail in there so uh please feel free to download that and the other uh resources that we have available in there for you so now um I just want to uh get to we have a lot of questions that have come in and I'm going to do my best to get to as many of these as I can in the time that we have um and so um Stephen I want to direct this first question over to you and um and someone's asking uh basically what will the impact on the compliance from countries outside of the EU and specifically this person asked in regarding about the UK um you with a British vote to quit the European Community um what are the ramifications from countries outside of the UA with this regulation well um if the British vote uh to to leave the European Union uh certainly from a perspective if if I just take it from the British perspective we um depends on how parliamentary council is a is advised on this matter uh but in my view uh we will probably adopt a definition of electronic signature which is now a very similar definition to electronic signature in the European Union in regulation which has been revised um I am comforted to say in direct uh consequence of my advice um in the discussion about the revision of the directive um and we'll be more in line with uh the USA Australia Canada new Zealand um and so there'll be less of um a considered approach about the particular type of electronic signature however um for any what I would Lally call if I may common law country that deals with what we also May Loosely call a civil law country such as most of the European States and um the southern American states like Brazil and Argentina you do have to think seriously about um what form of electoral ex signature you're going to use in those jurisdictions because in those jurisdictions there is a distinction between uh types of document private documents and public documents and the signature that is attached to a document of that um of a private document between two companies can affect its value in legal proceedings uh and so this is something that your lawyers have to be uh very familiar with otherwise you can make serious mistakes I want to direct this next question to jur um someone's asking well and and also I'm sure you're seeing this with Trends within your own customer base you know will e-signing become a major Trend in the EU countries and and reach broad adoption um are there certain countries um like the ones that were the first to create e signature laws are they more likely to lead this adoption what are you seeing um in with your customer base well not only with our customer base but also the customer base of those that are with us in the market uh you do have some countries with a very fast adoption rate for example Spain in the year 2008 and 2009 was a hotspot for East signing Italy popped up in the year 2011 to 2013 and is now one of those countries where paper assigning is very popular and also heavily used so the numbers are quite impressive if you are asking for the amount of documents that are assigned for example the Spanish Savings Bank they communicated at the end of 2014 that within their organization 600 million documents were assigned so um there is a track record that you can look on and uh the the type of electronic signatures used and what is preferred heavily depends on the regulation that is in civil or commercial laws so if we look into the German speaking countries for example almost every of the financial instit ution is now trying to identify if they first embark on either the remote approach or if they first equip their mobile Salesforce with means for in-person signing answer short enough for a longer one no there's so many questions we have to get to I I think that's going to be uh good for right now um um this next question here um Stephen let me go ahead and direct this over to you um how will the new laws in the regulation governing electronic signatures differ from those in the repeal directive um what are the main concerns arising from adoption of this regulation in regard to signatures in short I I personally uh don't think there'll be any difference at all um the definition of advanced electronic signature has been altered slightly in the same way that the definition of electronic sign has been altered slightly and an advanced electronic signature at one time um basically said that um it was if I try and actually use the actual words themselves I'll just pull up um the well I'm speaking let me just pull up thing um an invar electronic signature claimed that uh it's something that could be under your total control and that was adjusted uh um uh I'm just going to go down to it right now because um uh or yor very kindly has included the um the the actual terms in one of his slides and uh I'm just going down forgive me um for my um my slowness of of looking here um but um the the point about the advanced electronic signature here we are on slide 32 if anybody wants to go back to it is that um originally item three or on y slide 32 item C the advanced electronic signature is created using an electronic signature creation data that the signatur can with a high level of confidence use under his soul control now that used to be completely different um it used to say was the effect that it was under their soul control and as I and other and laa brazelle who is also written on electronic signatures have both pointed out consistently uh that no electronic signature can be under your sole control and the European Union have kindly accepted our criticism and altered that ingly which puts it uh into a more realistic uh framework so what we're looking at here is a more realistic framework of the different types of electronic signature under the regulation um but to answer so York's point empasis slly about the fact that um the UK does not use Advanced electronic signatures or qualified electronic signatures that is because we have no organization in the UK that mandates them in many countries in Europe uh such signatures such as advanced electronic signatures and qualified electronic signatures are mandated by government organizations which means populations are required to have them whether they want it or not whereas in the UK we do not do that uh and so that's the significant difference between the UK and the Republic of Ireland for instance um and the rest of Europe and Stephen a second part to that question um what are you what are you seeing as the main concerns arising from the adoption of this new regulation um frankly I don't see any um other than um you know the such things as as um company seals are included and other such items and identity issues um I have read through the uh regulation one um and I shall be reading you through it again as I revise my book but um uh the what has been put into place effectively is a mechanism by which one can do uh more double checks over the Internet uh preferably by viia secure means so for instance company's house um uh we call them company's house in the UK uh but each country has um an organization that registers uh commercial organizations and you become a registered uh organization with a company number um the regulation will facilitate uh the the um uh the strength that you can uh have in the information that comes from company's house for instance um W which of course can be to the good if you're doing things online only for instance um jur I want to direct this next question to you um you now the companies are are go you know are planning to do more with e signatures within their business processes um are you seeing you know any relief from an overregulation with this with this new regulation coming out uh with the consistency across the EU um how are you seeing companies being able to adapt and take advantage um that this is now a regulation yes there is SE several relief uh with regards for example to the interpretation of the directive from 1999 and the laws that you have in those 28 European countries uh you have for example in Germany uh the only option to sign with a qualified electronic signature if you are using specific Hardware typically connected to signature cards and card Raiders and there are Now options where that sort of signature can also be in a solution process as signing as a service and um the hurdle for physical identification was very high in several countries so that was typically that particular scenario when customers were stopping to using it even early adopters and some projects went dry so with regards to uh lowering the barriers this is one of the impacts of this particular regulation and there is also um kind of an initiative going on in the European commission to yeah let's say minimize the barriers for digital processes we just have to keep in mind what this regulation is all about it should create a digital single market and as of today for example um if you are a multinational organization that wants to do Omni Channel then you'll have to deal with legal regulations in various countries and even with different terminology so it breaks it brings us on the same level with regards to talking about terms about different technological approach es we do have um a little lower um bureaucracy around receiving our certificate so there are Now options where it's possible to provide uh a certificate on demand so from a business perspective just think about that typically quono who benefits from as signing it's typically the bank it's the insurance company and uh it's the Telco it's not the customer the customer has a fact faster process the customer experience is better but it should be the bank that is providing it to her to their customers so with regards to making this um more usable or if you are a service provider for example out of Italy and you want to do business in Austria as well you want to do business in uh Croatia etc etc then you can rely on One Trust service provider in one particular country so the crossborder recognition this is another let's say key term we haven't mentioned so far but um this is one of the key aspects why interest is currently so high and why we currently have so many people here on the line in this webinar from almost every European country um I do want to squeeze in one more question here because I know we're getting to the end of our webinar hour and we're still not through all of the questions um but uh you're just briefly um someone's asking about Roi and I and I realize it's not a matter of you know if companies employ um more e signatures into their processes but when um for when the companies when these companies do this what type of Roi and how quickly are are they seeing the Returns on this oh well if you just look on figures that have been published in the past now once again speaking about tracker track record and um speaking about publicly available sources whether it's analyst reports from forest or from Gardner or whether it's own Publications and presentations of those that are using e signing today so if you just look into for example Spain and Spanish Savings Banks then they had something like an Roi in between 9 to 10 to 11 months for their particular approach uh I would say that there is a sort of an average Roi for most of the E signing projects in between 12 to 15 months sometimes it takes 18 but it depends on what type of signing you're looking at and what you are calculating in so there are Roi calculators for that to identify what actually are the savings that you can achieve um depending on what processes you run today so if you just look on a large financial institution in Central Europe they typically calculate that in the customer on boarding process in a face-to-face scenario um it cost them something like two to three Euro to execute just one signed paper based document uh but we may be able to share this in individual conversations talking about pricing and about figures is something that is not as easy to be squeezed in two or three lines certainly certainly um we are getting to the end of our webinar hour and I just wanted to let our audience know that they can join aim in New Orleans in the United States for our annual conference that's coming up in April and we're going to have three exciting keynote speakers lined up and along with a lot of really great education sessions and Round Table discussions so that you can join in and participate it's not just passively sitting there and listening to some good lectures um so for more information go to aon.com um and I also just want to remind everyone that we have been recording this webinar and it will be available in the next day or two at the webinars on demand library and don't forget to download the resources that are in the list to the right of your slide area um and also when the webinar is over a brief survey is going to open up on your desktop and and I value your feedback and really would like to hear from you so um in and also in this survey you can also offer some comments and suggest future topics for us to cover so please take a moment to offer your feedback there um and I do want to thank our underwriter kofax uh without the support of our solution providers aim wouldn't be able to provide you with these free educational programs like our webinars so um you know kofax from Lex mark thank you very much for your support uh of the of our programs and so as we do bring our webinars to a close I I just want to leave you um our audience members with our speakers closing thoughts are a key takeaway from today's discussion and I'd like to start first with your glance um from kofax from Lex Mark your closing thoughts today okay so just to keep it pretty short um it's all about evidence but evidence is achieved if you're considering legal Technical and the emotional and social aspects so with regards to the regulation yes it opened doors and is primarily a path into the remote signing world and uh ises some of the signing processes so it's makes sense if you have already made your uh various attempts to go for resigning and you may have had some success but not really an overall success just have a look at it once more um there are more options that you may think of at the moment don't think about e signing as just a single component it's part of a digital transformation process which also includes cap ing data on mobile even things such as analytics Etc so don't go for a silo Approach at least not in your midterm or long-term plans these are my few little takeaways at the end of this webinar thank you jur and Stephen Mason your closing thoughts today thank you Teresa I mean I would agree with everything yor has said so I won't repeat it other than we have to think about um culture as well because culture plays a big part uh between countries and how we do with electronic signatures and in essence the the common law countries tend to think about uh not worrying too much about costs up front and they'll do things which uh may seem to be a little bit Rickety from the point of view of our our Continental um gists um and if something goes wrong it becomes more expensive whereas if one looks at um the regulation and advanced electronic signatures and and such like um you're putting the cost up front uh to reduce the cost at the end um of the processing in case you have a dispute so one that that um culture does take um H have um a part to play in the whole process of this uh integration of digital and electronic signatures thank you Theresa thank you Stephen and and that is all we have time for today thank you very much for joining us and for aim this is Teresa Ric and we will see you next time and have a good day e