Electronic Signature Legality for Administration in European Union - Simplify Document Signing Process

How to eSign a document: electronic signature legality for Administration in European Union

okay hello everyone and welcome to today's one floor Academy webinar could we just get a confirmation in our q a that you can hear us and that you can see us perfect okay great thank you yeah so my name is Felicia and I will be one of your hosts today I work in our customer support team and I've been working at Bonsall for almost four years and something that we have noticed is that we often get questions about the legality when it comes to e-siding and what it is that makes eSignatures legally binding which is very understandable since e-signing is still quite new and a lot of people are and companies are still using papers and pen to sign their documents so we wanted to have this webinar where we'll be going through the most frequently asked questions that we receive when it comes to Legal topics so let's start and I will hand over to my co-host and our guest yes hi everyone and so I am edius and you may remember me from previous webinars and I work with Felicia in the customer support team here at one flow and today we have a special guest Felix yes hello everyone uh us and as you might understand uh my name is Felix and I work at the legal department here at oneflow uh I've been here for roughly a year now so uh I think I know one or two things about um yeah about the topic we will cover today and hopefully we can can answer all your questions and concerns here yes so and if you have any questions during the webinar and please ask them with the Q a function and we'll get to them at the end of the session we'll be going through the agenda of how the webinar will look so first we'll start off walking through Adas and what is Adas basically then we'll go through the different types of signatures that you can use so with simple Advanced and qualified and what do they all mean then we'll continue with electronic IDs and what effect they have on your contracts okay then we'll jump on to sending contracts internationally because we know a lot of our users do that and it's a it's a good legal question to go through and what actually applies then we'll jump to verifying signatures and we'll walk you through how to do that and then we'll end it up with why it's not possible to edit assigned contract after it's been signed yeah so Felix to start this off we would like to jump into Adas so one flow and other digital contract platforms are built with an Ada's base can you elaborate on what Adas is uh yeah of course so Adas is the full name is electronic identification authentication and Trust Services um yeah that's the long term of it so Adas is is the name you always refer to much like gdpr it's very long and yeah we use the shorter version but it's basically a regulation established in the European Union and and to create a standardized framework for electronic transactions um so yeah the scope of the regulation is within the EU you can see it's a lower regulation or however you might call it and the goal as you see on the screen here is to facilitate a secure and seamless electronic interaction uh so yeah that's the that's what Adas is in a very short term and it has a lot of different technical aspects to it on how you can build your signatures and and yeah a lot of requirements for them to be valid and secure so but those are a bit more Technical and I won't go into detail there perfect thank you so within Adas there are different types of signatures what can I gain from knowing what the difference is between these kind of signatures uh yeah so it does recognize three different types of signatures we have SIMPLE Advanced and qualified and they all um they are a bit different in the requirement and have I want to say not different areas where you should use them but in some cases you have to use one in some cases you can use whatever you you feel comfortable with so um so yeah there we have them and if we start up with a simple and signature it's uh known as the basic electronic signature uh widely used in the world and are and it's generally accepted for almost any transaction and simple signature will be if you scan a handwritten signature into a PDF file for example or if you're checking a box or something along those lines that are quite easy to do but uh quite simple so to speak and but yet have a legally weight to it I know I have a few different signing methods that are equivalent to a simple signature we have different working names within one flow and I uh hand the word over to Felicia here to tell us a bit more about them yeah um so yeah we have a few different setting methods that we give you a simple signature and we have the screen right here so that's why I will be looking this way so let me show you in one flow where you can find them okay so you have your document contract and then I will be showing on my own participant but you can do this when you add your Chandra parties as well so here is where you can choose the sign method that you will be using in these three other ones that we have for uh simple signatures so the most commonly used one is the step that is signature and that will look like this you just click on sign you will get this pop-up that's saying that you are actually you that you're authorized to sign on behalf of one floor or your company and that you have read and understood and that you intend to sign this and then you just click on sign and the contract will be signed from your end and to show the next one we have the SMS verification [Music] click on sign with SMS your mobile and then you will receive a SMS with the code that you just enter here and then it's signed and the last one is the newest one that we have which is the handwritten signature and then you also click on sign get the same pop-up and here you can either draw your signature or you can just type it like this you can select the style that you like and then just fine and now it's signed so these are the simple signatures that we have in one flow perfect thank you both and let's move on to the next single type so that is Advanced could you tell us more about that release yeah sure as you said Advanced is the next kind of Step or or level here that you can go into um and uh basically the main difference here is the identification part of who is the signer um I think bank ID when we're talking about Advanced uh signatures here uh it's the most easiest and an accurate way of of describing it yeah so within one so that would be signing with bank ID because as Felix just mentioned it's easier to identify who assigned the contract if you have bank ID that if you sign with a with the simple ones um so in one flow we have bank ID for Sweden Norway Finland and Denmark that you can use to get an advanced signature and you choose them in the same way where I showed with the simple ones but if you can't see the back ID it's probably because you haven't activated yet on your account and let me just show you how you can do that quickly so you just go to admin page extensions and here you will have the electronic IDs so if you just activate this one and then you'll be able to choose which bank ID you will use so you just click them like this and then they're activated so now you will be able to choose them as your signing method perfect thank you both again uh so click similar signature type is qualified what is that about oh yeah so qualified is the I would say the highest level that is um defined in Adas and it's uh an advanced electronic signature with a digital certificate that has been equipped in in a way uh it's been the technical parties subject to build my my knowledge here but but yeah it's it's also a signature that is growing more and more on the market and um yeah we're looking of course looking into that as well and try and figure out how we want to do it um but yeah by law uh it should should be mentioned by law in Adas a qualified electronic signature is considered to be the same as a handwritten signature and that can be good in some cases where like the formal formalities uh of a certain contracts require uh explicitly a handwritten signature good to keep that in mind perfect thank you very much Felix for terrifying this so if I prefer using bank ID or any other Eid as my counterparty's signing method and what does this do for the contract in terms of what we just went through does it make any difference um yeah this is um this is a bit of a difficult question and you'll get the legal answer depends uh so both yes and no um why is it yes you might might wonder because you were using an advanced electronic signature instead of a simple one or a qualified and then it it will become easier to identify who has signed the contract and it's a trusted and widely used system of signing with bank ID trusted by Banks and and yeah those kind of very important Financial institutes so a lot of people will have a higher confidence and higher acceptance of uh of that kind of signature so that might be some arguments to why you should use advanced in some cases uh and no in the in the sense that yeah it's even though you signed it with the your bank ID we still have simple that is just as good for almost every case so the effect will be the same perfect great stuff so moving on to the next point which is sending contracts internationally so welfare can be used to send contracts all around the world but a commonly asked question is if a digital contract is legally binding in certain countries how can you go about to approach this situation and is there any Unity to be found here oh yeah yeah this is a very difficult question I would say to tackle because um we as a company that are active in this space we always want to make it to promise everything that everything is okay and everything is great but without having the proper knowledge of the of the very country specific rules or a contract in question it's very hard to to make any kind of statements here and so as we said before Adas will provide us with a general framework on how we're building our platform how electronic signatures should look from a more technical point of view but you also have country specific rules that will apply here so for instance in Sweden we have um if you're writing a will we need to have two witnesses and that is something that has not yet been discovered how you can make that valid uh with an insignature solution so maybe you need to to do the old school way of pen and paper there um and without knowing the ins and outs of every contract and every different legal area within all the different jurisdictions it's very hard to make some general or wide promise that that um or the legally binding part of it we can tell you how oneflow Works how it's built and on a general level answer your question but going to this very kind of specific questions is very hard um so yeah but with that said a lot of countries worldwide has adopted some kind of legislation regarding electronic signatures for example as Adas is within the European Union I know for a fact that he was saying Canada has some similar regulations regarding this so a lot of the time you can find very good guidance if you start looking for it um you can always consult in some lawyer or whatnot to get them to help you even further um but yeah I would I would just keep in mind uh when we're talking about this topic it's there's a lot of different ways that you can enter into a contract so it doesn't have to be by the old school pen and paper even though it might be the most commonly used for example if you you can do a verbal agreement a handshake agreement so there's tons of whales already so why not just improve it so it's very clear what what the terms of condition are if of your agreement instead of just having it verbally and now with the seamless digital solution it's super easy to just send that contract instead and it's very clear and specific how what um what what has been said what has been agreed upon for example so yeah yeah all right I think that answered the question as good as it could be answered but no let's jump on to a very fine signatures so if a client is contacting me and asking if they can verify that the contract is legitimate I know that there is a way to verify that the document hasn't been altered or so on and the signatures are correct how can I before and inform the client about this verification and what does that verification exactly mean yeah for sure so this is a very important part when we're talking electronic signatures uh on a general level and also I'm a case-to-case basis is very important to be able to provide evidence that the fact that the contract hasn't changed because before you entered into the contract you agreed upon certain terms you agreed on a made a certain price a certain and I don't know a certain Clause that was very important for the agreement and of course you want to make sure that this has not changed it's the essence of old contracts right so to do that you can verify the signatures in question and this is a bit technical or I wouldn't say too technical but it's a bit Technical and Felicia will demonstrate exactly how this is done through through one flow but the main part comes down to we download the PDF contract that is signed within one flow embedded in that file you will find um verification almost a link where you can download a verification of of the Contracting question and once that has been done you can get a encrypted hash number and those you can compare to the two documents uh in a way and make sure that no one has tampered or altered or made any changes to to the contract and and you will see that symbolize with a green little check mark almost in the top left corner here we will go in a bit more in how it looks in the system here in just a moment but um the verification part is as I said very important to to be able to make sure that nothing has changed and if the if there has been any changes this verification will almost be breached I would stay in like blame in terms so and that you will know that some kind of change has been made and you can compare the two documents that you have what has been changed and for the encryption of this kind of verification we use a widely recognized shell 256 encryption and that's the market Standard at the moment for for these kind of hash encryptions and we're always keeping up to date with with changes and if something happened in this area okay so I will just show you how you can find the verification on the contracts that's been signed in one flow but it it's very rare that you would even need this verification I mean if it's signed you can see that it's signed in the digital contract but if you're for some reason would need the verification it's always good to know where to find it so let me show you so if you go to your signed document in one cell it's like this you can see here that it's signed but if you want the verification you have to download the document as a PDF like this let me open it okay now you should see it here and in the downloaded PDF you can find the attachments and this is where you will find the verification so it's here as an attachment you open the file you have to open this text and put it in your browser and when you do that the verification will automatically be downloaded or you can download it from here so let me open this so this is what the verification will look like so you can see here this is the check mark that Felix was talking about so if you have this green check mark here you know that it's signed and that is valid all signatures are valid and if you would want to go even further you can also use this hash code to compare it to the code within the contract but this is a bit more technical so if you would for some reason have to do that please just contact us and we will and we will help you but as we said before it's very rare and you usually don't need this at all yeah and just just to add here uh I believe we have a help center article uh regarding how to download the verification so if this was a bit too fast or maybe you didn't catch a specific area that you wanted to to dig a bit deeper into you can always go through that article for further help or or just call our support we're we're happy to help you yeah of course exactly okay all right thank you very much listen Felix now we are going to jump to our final question so I've missed out on an important detail in my now signed contracts is it possible to edit the document when it has been signed uh the very very short answer here is no it's it's not and you don't want it to be either um and if you want me to to expand a bit on this statement it's imagine you're negotiating a contract with a potential customer here so and you have agreed on on almost all the classes and all the particulars of the of your contract but then you notice oh I missed a zero in my in my offer right it's it's a very very cheap so so they get it for a hundred crowns instead of a thousand um that's a major change right so if you if they would have signed and you would then be able to go into the contract alter the content within the contract then they might have been um yeah I don't know they wouldn't feel too good about that right and imagine someone did that to you you wouldn't feel too good about that either so it's a security aspect to not be able to change the content within the contract once any party has been signed or once it has been signed from any party if you make a change however uh the contract will reset all the signatures that was on it and thus making everyone sign again it can now have made an extreme and kind of bizarre example of adding like another zero to the contract but it could be as easy as a DOT after a sentence or yeah very small things as well so but it goes back to the security and it's impossible for us to differentiate between what is a very important change and what is uh what is a little acceptable change so we just draw the line anything change will reset the signatures for everyone's safety so so that's that's why if you go into the to the very nuanced and details of how the service works yeah that makes a lot of sense and if you were in the situation that your contract has been fully signed you can simply create a copy of the contract perform the changes you want to add and then send it out for assigning again but uh yes that was our primary topics that we were going to go about today so now we'll be continuing to the Q a okay I know we've got some questions let's see if there are any questions that we can answer right away um the presentation will be is being recorded and will be summoned uh in maybe today or tomorrow and to everyone who registered to the webinar so you will all take part of this this presentation again I watch it in your own time let me see here what if the party doesn't have a bank ID or similar so yeah if they don't have bank ID you can use the the simple simple ones so you won't get a advanced signature but as we said simple is also legally binding so if doesn't if it's not required to have an advanced one you can just use the simple ones let's see how it is uh yeah so there's no difference between uh oh sorry uh legally is there any difference in in signature uh validity uh within the three types of simple signatures one flow provides and it's not it is still a simple uh signature um and that's test and suffix so then we just figured out different cool ways that you can actually use a simple signature and how you can make it look very cool and and yeah and make you shoes a little bit some feel it's better to have the SMS verification part where you have to enter your phone number for example that adds a little layer of that it gets sent to a certain person and yeah it can help with with identifying that person so on but it's not uh it won't change anything so to speak between the other um signatures yeah so do we need to have the personal identify identified number for the signatures before we send out the contract so I'm guessing this means when you use bank ID and no you don't have to have their personal number uh you can just leave that empty and when they click on sign they will have to enter the the number themselves foreign citizens without bank ID uh is it possible to use a passport for advanced electronic signatures and no as of today we only have those four Bank IDs or Advanced electronic signatures Within whatso yes and then I see we have a question about from Christian here who says ICU use an MIT for Denmark that is soon outdated as we are now using myth ID will you be updating this soon and we are already supporting myth ID in the system so it does not say on the uh Eid as configuration page but what basically happens is that when you select the damage and bank ID or Eid um the system will recognize if you are using mem ID or mid ID and forward you to the proper method there so meet ID is available in one form we should just change that in the extension page to make it more clear yeah yeah okay so in which case is it better to use Bank edit design rather than the simple signing so that would be sometimes it's required to use it so like in Sweden when you when you sign watch video listening act for example uh you they require that they are signed with an advanced signatures that's when you would have to use it but if it's not required then I there's there's no requirement for you to use that yeah and it it can depend on your counterparty as well right so if they feeling they're new to the market with electronic signatures they haven't been using it quite widely or they don't follow the the trends of the market right now as a lot of people are moving over to electronic signatures then maybe a back ID can be provided as as kind of uh you're leaning on the reputation of bank ID if you if you say like that because that is so widely used for accessing your bank your financials and Etc signing your your taxes for example so then it might be like helping you and to make it clear for the counterparty that yeah this is this is talk location as well but as Felicia said there's no like difference if there is no like formal requirements but our qualified signatures the highest level possible in one flow and no it's not possible in one flow today it's been very complicated to to use qualified for for eSignatures but it's getting more and more right yeah for sure so Advanced is currently the highest level that that we offer and uh we're aiming to to have like qualified signatures sooner rather than later because we see the increasing need for it in the market and people are asking for it so that's something we're we're currently working on I can't give you any estimated time but just know that we're we're hard at work here so we're trying to to get it up and running as soon as possible I see a question here from Houston that says can you reset the signatures after signing in that case I think that it's referring to when we discussed um performing changes and there is no manual task for resetting signatures in a completely signed contract but if the contract is for example missing a signature uh or there's someone left that has the sign and you perform any changes in a contract very all the signatures will be reset if you're changing the content for example if it is completely signed you simply have to create a copy of the contract and then send it out again with the changes and then we also recommend that you possibly Mark the previous contract as terminated so that there's no not two accepted contracts floating around and that you only have one active in the system yeah and just to add a bit there uh if uh if you send a contract to your counterparty and you sign the contract and like Hey we're ready from our part but then you noticed that oh no we didn't add this or we missed taking this out of the contract then you you yourself can just made make a very small change to contract maybe add a DOT somewhere and where it doesn't matter State the changes it will reset your signature so to speak so that that's a little work around if if not both parties has signed it yet yeah and that's uh also a bit about the next question that we got is we usually do upsells uh once the contract has been signed is there any way to make these updates to a signed contract uh or add-ons and stuff and no it's not possible to update a signing contract once it's signed it's it's locked you cannot make any changes to this document so if you would have to add stuff or if you get an upsell or something like that you can make a copy of the contract and then you make the changes in the copy in the new contract then you send out for signing again since everyone has to sign the new information that you have and then you can link them together within one flow so you can link them that they're related to each other or that they replace each other or what kind of lead you want to use so you can do that within months also there it's very easy for you to see that these two are linked together and we have a guide for that as well in our help center um that also answers the next question exactly it's the same so here we have one do you want to Echo do this one um they're simple ones I guess oh um standard signatures General valid for employment contracts that's a great question and I'm not sure we want to go into too much details uh here without knowing what jurisdiction you're talking about um yeah where the the content is signed I know there was recently some case law from Germany where fixed contracts required at least a qualified eSignature um so that depends on the company yeah their own like yeah the company and where it's located and what type of work is being performed here so so there's uh there's a lot to it but I know that judgment came I don't know if it was it was very recently so I think it's not not more than a month old um so yeah it's a difficult question to answer but uh but a lot of HR companies use different asynchers solutions here in Sweden to sign employment contracts [Music] okay it's a good question I have a case where one of our departments added an actual written signature in the template uh what is your view on that and I'm guessing you mean that they're scanned in like with the yeah yeah so I'm guessing here that that's not valid in one flow it's it hasn't been signed in one flow if you have that uh notice if you have a paper that you sign uh uploaded to one flow you can mark it as signed you don't have to sign it to the counterpart you have to get them to sign um so so yeah you can mark it as signed within one flow but it's not it's it's not signed in one flow yeah I would say now okay another one of the yeah I think we'll answer that yeah okay okay you're still use them what they wanted so this is a follow-up from the collection we just took very far says they still use the e-signing but they wanted the employee to see an actual signature in the contract when they signed it so I understand that part at the in the web version uh as you know the signatures are displayed on the right side of the page but if you download the pdf version all the signatures will be separately displayed at the very last page they will have their own separate pages and that also applies if you use handwritten signature because your handwritten signature that you used in one flow while signing will appear in this little box so in a way it appears um might not be exactly where you want it but but it's it will be there in the contracts yeah thanks for the presentation any idea when you expect to expand your bank IDs into the into the Netherlands and I know that they are looking right now on different bank IDs for a lot of countries so they are looking into it but I cannot say when we will have it but it's been looked at right and we want of course we want to have as many as possible so this is something that we're aiming to have as soon as possible so is this something that we would know are there any countries that does not accept this interest at all uh to my knowledge uh I I'm not sure I gotta say um I believe there's it might be some but I have a hard time seeing which country that would would be um I think it's it can be like a bit of a culture culture thing as well um that where electronic signature might have a harder time reaching the target audience but I don't see that it would be like explicitly um not accepted so to speak unless it's for a certain type of contract okay do you have a recommend recommended practice on what to do uh how to treat the contract that has incorrect information and then is corrected with the new agreement is this still signed legally document or how they will make sure that it's not used in the future so if you have a contract in one flow and you see that something is wrong with the contract so you want to make a new one you can you can mark the other one as terminated to make it nut um yeah not active anymore yeah either you make you terminated as you said or you can just have an additional agreement where you replace the certain terms that you both agree on and sign that and Link them together then you know that the they can have some kind of writing along the lines of this will replace this and then you should have solved that problem yeah then you also make it very clear in the new one that this replaced the other one and it's not valid anymore good point um I guess this is the same answer as that once that it depends yeah it kind of depends but uh I don't believe it's at the moment oh sorry signing a lot for property real estate purchase contracts in Sweden at the moment uh no um it could be with the qualified eSignatures I believe and I haven't done any real Research into that at the moment um let's see let's see if one party signs a contract and another party changes their name and not in the contract but in one slide I'm guessing you mean in the participant module will the signatures reset and I think they mean uh but by the profile maybe so not in the contract but it won't flow as a takeover you know could it be that so we're talking about the signatures so if you're if you're inside a contract then you have the participant list on the side view and uh some information there can be changed without it resetting any kind of signatures within within one flow but this is this is very specific um yeah changes that you use maybe a name or something um and some of that information is also that can be locked down so they can the counterparty can't change it at all and some of the information change even to the participant will will reset the signature so it said it's a bit tricky question because it kind of depends on what change you're referring to here if it is a profile change in one flow that you for example and take over your colleagues profile and use that user and that will not affect any previous contracts that have been signed and it these changes in your profile will only affect the new ones that you yeah from the day you you changed it okay we've answered this already yep um oh sometimes I feel uh safer to sign up paper why is simple Electronics signature safer than a signatures on paper okay so so the legal effect will pretty much be be the same between signing on paper or signing on a simple electronic signature of course unless there is no like formal requirements here that that goes into to why you want the paper signature the advantages as I see them with um with a simple eSignature is that it will be stored within the yeah within one flow and one flow is a cloud-based service provider so you will always have access to the contract wherever you might be and it also it can't be damaged in the same way a paper contract can or disappear in that sense so there's like a lot of those kinds of risks you will eliminate by using um a simple eSignatures that that most people don't think about that are of course present how would you enforce a contract if it has burned up or gone missing that won't happen in one flow as we have backups and all of heavy encryption and yeah different solution to make it very very safe perfect so now we'll actually take the last question because we're running out of time but we appreciate that we have received so many questions uh let's see we can take this one what counts as the signature date did that the last signature was complete and yeah that's correct so the contract is signed when the last person signs it because that's when it's it's signed when everyone has signed has signed it so when the last person signs it it's signed but you in in a digital contract you can always see when everyone has signed it if you would want to but the signature date is the date that the last signatory signs the contract exactly okay yeah oh sorry you start there if you want any sort of legal things you can add it into the contract right if you are delivering for a certain date you can you always put that or you should put that into a contract so yeah it was just this contract goes into effect yes perfect thank you everyone so much for attending this webinar we hope you've learned something here for me this information hopefully and for all the questions that we didn't have time to answer now uh we will get back to you exactly so hey thank you so much thank you very much have a nice day thank you