eSignature Legality for Time off Policy in United Kingdom: Simplifying Document Management

How to eSign a document: eSignature legality for Time Off Policy in United Kingdom

today we should be discussing what exactly e-witnessing is and the benefits of using e-witness into your organization we will also be having a brief discussion with the lamb registry whom we have worked with closely in developing their guidance on e-witnessing as well as developing our own solution who have very kindly agreed to take part in the webinar we should then be demonstrating our solution in ance to the hmlr guidance and we'll leave time at the end for a q a firstly could i please welcome michael abraham the product manager from the land registry good morning michael good morning james everyone uh could i also introduce robin malpass the deputy director from the land registry good morning robin good morning james good to be with you it's good to have you here and could i also introduce samuel rowe who is yoti's very own legal and policy associate good morning sam hi there james good morning good morning and just to introduce myself i'm the host today so i'm james lankster and i'm the sales manager for yot so let's kick off then so what is e-witnessing there are many types of documents that require witnessing such as deeds loan agreements mortgage agreements to name a few but using an eSignature platform such as yotee sign now means that these documents can be signed securely and electronically this removes the paper-based process of having documents signed and witnessed but also increases security by introducing an audit trail into the process and reduces the amount of time spent in having these signed manually yoti is driven by security and providing real value for money this is why we have built our platform with a limited view for witnesses signing the document which means they only view the front cover and where the witness actually signs other well-known brands do not offer this functionality and allows the witness to view the full content of the document i presented this solution to many law firms recently who have mentioned that having the witness see the context of the content of the document is no good for them our next release will see the witness not being able to see the front cover of the document at all or any aspect of the content of the document only the place where they are required to sign the document to confirm that they were present and have witnessed the primary signer signing the document we are hmlr compliant and have added in a one-time passcode that is sent via a text message to both the primary signer and the witness for added security from a cost perspective and driving real value for money as mentioned before the time and effort that is reduced from using this solution is immense i could post the documents for more than it costs for having the witness electronically by iot sign this is an extremely more convenient way of witnessing and signing a document with this cost effective technology there is also the ability to sign using a verified id which is digital identity driven signing enhancing the security even further with yota sign and making this transaction and solution extremely secure and powerful this means that there's the ability to prove the signers and the witnesses identity by linking attributes from a verified id at the point of signing the document such as their name their address their date of birth and their nationality not only does this mitigate the risk of email phishing and hacking but you have the confidence that the document has been signed by both the primary signer and the witness we shall soon be adding in the functionality of geolocation for further proof that the witness was in the same location as the primary sign up that was a very brief overview of e-witnessing and also using a verified id for enhanced security so i would like to hand over to sam rowe who i mentioned before is yoti's legal and policy associate who will be asking these three key questions to the land registry thanks sam yes james so michael i thought we could start off by uh perhaps having you talk about how you came to develop your guidance on eSignatures and you witnessing yeah sure thanks then so hopefully i can do this process justice in a few minutes because it was obviously drawn out over quite a long period of time and the key concepts were discovering and learning um collaborating with industry experts as well as experts within government and our customers so convincing firms and then iterating and developing that practice we weren't developing a solution we were enabling other solutions through practice so it was important to understand what solutions were available the conveyancers were using already as well as undertaking sort of an in-depth market assessment of um what solutions were available so liaising with a number of different market providers to understand um how their solutions operated and what that what they what they offered their customers and ultimately what he wanted to ensure from this sort of insight was that we could draft practice that enabled the use of signatures that was practical so it could be used um with it within an everyday environment and was um uh was meeting the needs of quite a um what is a difficult time at the moment economical so it could be readily used um but also legal important and secure as well this is um people's property um it's a there's an awful lot of investment in there so we want to make sure that uh the security is is done correctly so um it's probably worth robin talking a bit more about the legal side which i'm sure we'll do in a minute but the the that process is still ongoing we're still discovering we're still learning and we're still iterating that practice as we move forward but ultimately it was about getting that discovery that learning and then collaborating and then iterating fantastic thanks michael well that is it i think that's a wonderful segue into my second question which is now you've got this brilliant easting material witnessing guidance what can firms use it from robin maybe that's better addressed to you well the the thing is that the law has evolved over the last 10 years around electronic signing of documents we've seen a number of cases where judges have been willing to accept that the signature that's been applied to a document electronically is a valid signature and that was endorsed by the law commission in 2019 when the law commission considered in detail electronic signing and the law around it but i think for practical purposes and for people who are going to use um yoti's e-signing platform to electronically sign the important point to stress is that the law is essentially the same if an individual is signing a deed and a witness is required to sign with them which in the case of an individual as opposed to a corporation they are then the witness needs to be physically present when the signer signs and then our advice uh is that the witness should then also add their electronic signature and details as soon as possible thereafter so you could have a situation where that you ask your neighbor to come in to witness that you he's signing a document they witness you e-signing it and then they go next door log on to their computer they get the email from yoti and then they log on and add their signature and personal details that's fine but the key thing here is that it's all done as contemporaneously as possible and we believe with uh using signature signing platforms like yot that actually this can all be done very easily and completely legally compliant mike is there anything you wanted to add to what i've said there no that's fantastic thank you great great thanks both of you and just so it's clear in my mind does that mean that i could use e-witnessing for for example deeds like uh in the home buying process absolutely so um the practice that we introduced uh last july initially and it's been modified since uh in practice land registry practice guide a execution indeed section 13 it actually explains uh and for people who look at it for the first time you'll see it's actually quite concise it actually explains that there are in truth now no real limitations on when you can use an electronic signature with witnessing to complete a land registration deed or document so the the yoti signing platform could be used to sign any deed that comes into the land registry wonderful thanks very much that is uh very useful for clarifying for me and i'm sure some of the attendees what uh e-witnessing can be used for nowadays um perhaps then i'll move on to my last question i just wanted to ask perhaps both of you what you envisage being down the line in terms of developments for e-witnessing given that you've now of course got both practice guide 8 and perhaps even thinking about practice guide 81 yeah so i'll i'll start and then i'll then i'll hand over if that's okay so i think we're always looking to as we've demonstrated already always looking to develop the practice um uh practice guided section 13 of witnessed electronic signatures as technology develops as security methods develop um as scope changes so that's something we're absolutely going to be continuing to do i think our focus at the moment is currently on assessing the feasibility of qualified electronic signatures so for those that don't um know what a qualified electronic signature is essentially this is a higher form of digital signature which um operates within the regulation um and therefore can give you a higher level of assurance and security and we're now considering whether that could operate within um section 91 of the land registration act and therefore it could remove the need for a witness and because of the additional um level of security so i think that's sort of where our um our focus is at the moment but absolutely we'll continue to monitor and develop the witnessing practice as well i don't know if there's anything you wanted to add to that robin yes sam if i can just add very briefly to what mike has said there i i see uh witnessed electronic signatures being around for a very long time i i you know we've said publicly we're very interested in qualified electronic signatures and we're keen to run a pilot as soon as we can but i do think that the witness electronic signature it's there it's out there that people can use it today and we're also now looking at other practice changes um to allow for the use of electronic signatures for documents that aren't deeds as well and indeed we're about to make some changes to practice that will also allow for the yoti signing platform to be used for signing other legal documents that are presented to the land registry as well so it's a pretty exciting time sam and uh you know we're delighted that uh you you've made you've made the changes that you've had to your offerings so that people can now easily use it wonderful well michael robin that has been fantastic and extremely insightful thank you very much and i should probably say that if any of the participants have any questions we have got the q a function if people want to put questions in there and we'll address them at the end of this session but for now i'll just say again thank you very much both michael and robin from the land registry and james perhaps i can hand back to you for a demo looking forward to it thank you sam michael and robin okay so we're going to go to the live demo now so what i'm going to be doing here i'm going to play in three roles here so i'm going to play the sender so i'll be uploading a document for signing for the primary signer i will then take the role of the primary signer so i'll populate the document i will at that point nominate a witness i will then play the role of the witness to access and sign the document to say that i've witnessed the primary signer so let me just get out of my screen and go into my platform okay so this is our platform um we have an open api but i'm showing the web version today we've got everything that you would expect from a decent uh e-signing platform from organizations templates etc so what i'm going to do is create a document for sending so i'm going to upload a document and this is going to be a tr1 form give that a second to upload there i'm going to put the name of the primary signer so in which case this is going to be myself this is a demo platform that i'm showing you so i'm just going to put in the role as primary for clarification so i'm going to add a primary signer to the role here so what i'm going to do now is assign uh add a witness now we do have the function as i mentioned before to turn the authentication on i'm not going to do it within this demo but we do have the the ability to sign with a verified identity which is yoti's core product for to further added security what i'm going to do here is add a witness now at this point i don't know who the witness is going to be because i'm the sender of the document it's going to be nominated by the primary signing which is james lancaster so for added security we're going to put a telephone number in to send a one-time passcode so i'm just looking at my telephone number there then go to next we're now presented with the tr1 form this is a four page document so what i'm going to do here is start building the document up for uh completion so what i can do here is add a text box for james to to input some data can put some data in there for the property details we've got an automatic date time stamp set that's automatically populated as i go down i'm building the form up so i can start adding some check boxes you know someone's going to ask a question do you have templates and just reiterate we do have templates you don't have to keep doing this again and as i go down further down i can see where the primary sign is due to sign as well as the witness so with the primary signer i will request that james inputs the signature there as well as inputting the name there and at this point i will then assign the witness details to enter their details here as well as the signature for the witness i then select next um to make sure i'm happy with the document i can preview the document to make sure everything's lined up i can rename the envelope for the sake of this demo i'll call it the witnessing tests i can put a little message to the person the sign-in document and i can also set reminders so i don't have to keep chasing them and that's it so you can see that it's been designed as a very very simple flow for the sender of the document so what i will do now is just drop into my emails if i refresh this i can see that that's come through so i open up as the primary steiner now if i read the context that's associated to the email this document sender has requested a witness for your signature it is a legal requirement that the witness sees you applying your digital signature so please make sure your witness is present when you sign this document so the primary signer opens up the the link to see the document this document requires a one-time password for security purposes we will send a one-time password to your mobile number shortly please continue so when i select continue that then triggers a one-time passcode being sent to my mobile device you can see that that's come through straight away so i entered the verification code which was nine nine zero nine nine five i click continue so this now gives me access to access a document so it states on the screen your signature requires a witness a witness is someone that can verify it in person that you have signed this document digitally you can choose anyone who is over 18 and of sound mind i'm not another signer of the document and don't have any commercial or financial interest in this document so i as the primary signer agree and continue with that statement i accept and continue the terms of yoti sign what i can do now is start populating the fields that are requested so i'll just put some plumbing information in here you see that the the date has automatically been populated i can go down and start selecting uh the check boxes um and as we go further down it's asking me my name in it's asked me to click to sign so i click to sign so that is the primary sign of completing the document i go to submit the document but what it now asks is to add the witnesses details so i input details of the address of the witness i am using a fma platform for this i then input the telephone number of the prior of the witness i then put the name of the person that is witnessing the document then add them to the witness and that's been completed so the witness would have been sat next to me i've signed as the primary signer and now this document is going over to the witness i'll go back into my emails again and click refresh i can see that that has come through so the witness receives the email got some information for the witness you have been assigned as a witness for this document is a legal requirement that you have seen the signer applying their digital signature so please make sure you were present when they signed the document so as a witness accesses the link we go through that process again where it requires another one-time passcode so that confirmation code has come through to the witness click continue and it states on the screen this document requires a witness a witness is someone that can verify in person that the primary signer james lancaster signed this document digitally so it then asks to confirm that you're over 18 and of sound mind and not another designer of the document and don't have any commercial or financial interest and it asks for confirmation that the witness confirms that they were physically present when the documents were signed unless they select that and they confirm they were physically present they can't move forward to the next step so we agree and continue you accept and continue the terms of yoti saying now remember what i said about before about um the limited view for the document for the witness so what we've got here is page one of four so this is the cover sheet what it does now it jumps straight to page four out four so the witness doesn't see the context of the document so what we can do here is input the name of the witness so in this case i'm john matthews as the witness i then go to sign it and i submit the document that transaction has now been complete from the sender to the primary signer to the witness now if i jump back in to my portal and refresh the screen i can see the e-witnessing test has been complete i can drill down into that transaction so i can see who signed and who hadn't signed if it wasn't completed and we've got some analytics that sit behind now because you could have five primary signers and five witnesses so you can see who simon who hadn't signed for security we can view the history of the transaction that's been completed and this is um also um replicated within the signing receipt which i'm going to show you but you can see here when the document was created and sent when the the one-time passcode was requested when it was submitted when the witness was added with their email address we got the ip excuse me the ip address in there as well what you can do is download the information from within the portal now with e-signing platforms the sender of the documents gets a copy in their inbox and the signee gets a copy in their inbox but it's important to add with this transaction the witness does not receive any information or confirmation that they signed the document they don't get a copy of the document they don't they don't receive anything the primary signer will receive a copy of the documents but what they will receive is the document has been signed they will also receive a text text file which is the hash output the transaction that's taken place so we use cryptographic signatures and certificates that sit behind that so that's your proof but what the primary signer will receive is a copy of the sign-in receipt like i say if there were five primary signers on the signing receipt they would only see their information and their witness so they wouldn't be able to see any other primary signers details or the witnesses details however the sender of the document will receive information from the primary signers so that if there was five all primary signers and all five witnesses so it's gated so it's locked down to to see only what you should see so within here you've got information regarding the envelope name so i called it ewits in test one-time passcode required yes it was we've got information that relates back to the documents four-page document within the document id then you've got the signing information of the primary signer the information regarding that as well the email address and the witnesses um name and their details as well but you've got a full audit trail of the the process that's actually taken place when it was sent when the otp was requested via these telephone numbers on here and as you go further down you've got the flow from signing with the witness the otp when it was submitted and you've also got the ip addresses on there as well i know there are some questions that have come in but sam uh could you kindly um look at the questions please yeah of course james so we've had two really interesting and and i think useful questions the first question is has there been a lender consultation and if there has what is their feedback concerning the signing of mortgage deeds did you want me to take that one robin please mike yep so that there has been lender feedback um we had a session with uk finance recently um and generally i think lenders are supportive of anything that can enable digital transformation and make the journey better for their their customers but absolutely that has to be has to be done in the right in the right way so um yeah i think generally the lenders are supportive of the direction and we're working with them to help them um enable the practice for the signing of um things like mortgage data thanks michael and james the second question was what does the land registry need to be sent is it the completed tr1 and the digital signature file or just the tr1 form should i take that one mike yeah so we we it's a really good question thank you um we thought long and hard about this and we concluded that the land registry only needs to transfer and we are recommending to law firms that they retain the completion statement audit report as part of the conveyancing file we don't want the audit report we would be very concerned to hold it because it contains as james demonstrated there it contains um sensitive personal data that could uh be viewed by third parties and we don't want that um we think that and this is why we looked at the conveyancers certificate so one of the requirements um is that a conveyancer provides a certificate to the land registry that to the best of their knowledge and belief the requirements for witnessed electronic signatures in the practice guide have been followed and that was we felt preferable to asking for detailed audit reports so only the transfer not the audit report thanks very much robin and mike that's that's really useful we've also got a question from julie dawson who asks um just whether we could confirm if today people have to still be in the same location and that's that i suppose the signee and the witness um i mean i'm certainly happy to answer that and then robin maybe you can give a gloss if you like so my understanding is that all of the documents which the land registry is concerned with um in that instance because the document has to be signed with certain formalities being met the signer and the witness have to be physically located in the same place so they have to be in the presence of one another or the witness has to be in the presence of the signee but of course there are a number of documents that don't require any formality so like a basic contract for example doesn't require any formality and therefore e-witnessing could be used in a remote way potentially um of course it depends on how the e-witnessing platform works and what sort of prohibitive value you'd get from that new witnessing platform but certainly from yot's perspective we would suggest that if you'd like to use a basic contract and have it witnessed just for that extra probes of value you can do that remotely robert i'm not sure if you wanted to add anything i think that's right um it's important it's a good question again um again it's something else we thought long and hard about and we did take leading council's advice on this point because as you can imagine going into lockdown people were asking how can i get my indeed witness when people are isolating or or or in lockdown situations but the law is clear uh for for a deed in england and wales to be a valid deed and where a witness is required the witness must be physically present when the sign assigns that's not a land registry requirement that's a requirement under the general law but you're right it's all about the legal formalities that need to be followed so in the case of a contract the same legal formalities don't apply and i'm sure what you said is absolutely right wonderful effects robin kevin asks are there any anticipated issues with the self-certification by the witness that he or she is of sound mind it's a very interesting question so um it's not something that we ask for but it's an interesting um it's an interesting question clearly there is a responsibility to make sure uh if you're acting for a party that the party uh who signs it does so lawfully and clearly someone who wasn't of sound mind would not be will not have the capacity to witness so it should i think be a box that is a formality tick box wonderful thank you robin hey any more questions there sam none none so james i'll hand back to you thank you okay uh just um just like to reiterate that um you know we we are a fantastic signing platform we've got a fantastic e witnessing solution we are offering free trials to this so my my name and my email address is on the screen at the moment so if you have any further questions or you're interested about um taking up a free trial then please let me know um sam michael robin thank you very much for your time today i think it's been very beneficial having you on the call and very insightful so thank you again if there's nothing else to add then we'll close the webinar and thank you very much for everyone for joining thank you