The Ultimate List of E-Signature Resources for Australia

Mark Brown of Sydney, Australia, recently closed on his mortgage. He got to settlement day, was ready to pick up the keys and move into the house, only to discover there was an issue with the documents – they hadn’t been properly witnessed when notarized – which stopped his family from taking possession of the house for a week.
"When you’re expecting to get the keys that day, and all of the sudden you can’t, you’re scrambling to manage all kinds of hassles and unanticipated costs. We had to move in with family. Put stuff in storage. Reschedule the moving truck. We had tradespeople booked to start on renovations. Everything had to be put on hold and rescheduled. The sellers were out of the country, so documents had to be shipped around the world in a rush for signatures."
"It was a nightmare."
The ability to remotely sign with e-signatures could have put the family in their new home right away.
Today, everything is about speed. E-signature technology makes it possible to sign in minutes. With a few clicks or taps on a mobile device, the customer applies a non-repudiable e-signature to documents. To the signer, the experience is as simple as clicking a few "Sign Here" buttons, but in the background, the e-signature software manages the authentication, enforces workflow, captures intent, gathers a full audit trail, and ensures distribution of the final e-records.
In Australia and around the world, the drive to digitise and transform paper-based business processes is accelerating, to keep pace with customer expectations. According to consulting firm Deloitte, "Australian mobile consumers are known for their love of devices and willingness to early-adopt technologies."[1] Nowhere is the need for mobile convenience and speed more pressing than in the financial services sector – where smaller firms and start-ups are leveraging technology to compete with big, established players. In the U.S., for example, banks like Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans have implemented e-signatures, but so have small, regional lenders such as Signature Mortgage and Somerset Lending.
Similarly, in Australia, a Big 4 Australia Bank is using e-signatures to improve customer experience in lending and wealth management. The bank was able to compress the time to issue, receive and process loan applications, reducing loan processing time from 8 days to 24 hours. Auto loans site Savvy Finance, wealth tracking app MyProsperity, fintech start-up A.S.A.P. and many others are onboard with e-signature.
Clearly, it’s time to remove paper from everyday customer-facing transactions.
So how do Australian organisations make the transition off paper when documents require signatures? To help answer that question, we’ve compiled a list of the top 40 e-signature resources for Australia.
Electronic and Digital Signature 101
- Beginner’s Guide to E-Signatures in Australia
- Electronic Signature Guide for Banks in Australia
- Electronic Signature Guide for Healthcare in Australia
- E-Signatures 101 for Australia (60 min. webcast)
Infographics
Financial Services Use Cases for E-Signature
- From Asia-Pacific Banking & Finance and Australia-based Nuvola Group: Introduction to Electronic Signatures for Financial Services & Insurance Companies (60 min. webcast)
- Driving Your Bank’s Digital Strategy Forward with E-Signatures (60 min. webcast)
- Top E-Signature Use Cases in Banking (20 min. read)
- Digital Account Opening with E-Signatures: Become Customer-centric & Accelerate Your Sales Cycle (60 min. webcast)
- eBook: Pathways to Digital Mortgage (20 min. read)
- CSO interviews eSignLive president Tommy Petrogiannis on digital mortgage in Australia
Select Australian Organizations Using E-Signatures
- Big 4 Australia Bank: Personal loans and wealth management
- Auto loans site Savvy Finance: "We have already seen our conversion rates go up by 10%."
- Wealth tracking app MyProsperity: "There’s a wave of change happening in the financial services industry in Australia." Read the IDM article.
- Fintech start-up A.S.A.P.: "eSignLive provides the necessary levels of authentication, security, legality and auditability we need for compliance."
- IT solutions provider Nuvola Group: "eSignLive’s deep industry experience and strongest legal protection played an enormous role in the decision to integrate it within our solutions."
- Avoka: "Avoka’s goal is to help banks, wealth managers and insurance carriers digitally transform their business… without falling to paper to collect a signature."
Electronic Signatures and the Law
- Australia's Electronic Transactions Act 1999
- Australia’s Electronic Transactions laws by state and territory
- New Zealand’s Electronic Transactions Act 2002
- Lawyers Weekly: E-Signatures: Spelling It Out
- Legal Practice Intelligence: A Leading E-Signature Provider Overcomes Cloud Data Sovereignty Concerns
- Legal Practice Intelligence: The Time Has Come To Gain Expertise in E-Signing
- Electronic Signature Laws Around the World
- Electronic Signatures: When are they Effective? By Peter Bolam and Rachel Choi
Data Residency & Privacy in Australia
- eSignLive Expands with New Data Centres in Australia
- eSignLive Now Stores E-signature Data in Australia. Here’s Why It Matters.
- G’Day Mate! eSignLive Extends Data Residency to Australia
E-Signatures in the Media
- Image & Data Manager: Exclusive Interview with Tommy Petrogiannis
- CRN: Australia’s Slow But Sure Shift To Digital Signatures
- iStart: Digital Signatures Strip Out Pen And Ink
- The Paypers: Vasco Launches Instances Of E-Signature In Europe And Australia
- Image & Data Manager: Digital Workflow for Regulated Industries
- ChannelLife Australia: eSignLive Expands with New Data Centres in Australia
Analyst Reports
- Gartner 2017 Market Guide for Electronic Signature [requires an account to access]
- Read a summary of the Gartner Market Guide for Electronic Signature in this blog: Analysts Say E-Signature is a Prerequisite for Digital Business
- Forrester Research: Vendor Landscape: E-Signature, Q4 2016 [complimentary until April 12, 2017; after that date, access it here]
- Forrester Research: TechRadar™: Digitizing Operational Processes, Q2 2015 [requires an account to access]
- G2 Crowd's Electronic Signature Software Rankings
Mobile E-Signatures
- Smile & Sign Video: Smile & Sign harnesses the power of biometrics, fraud analysis and e-signature technology to help financial institutions deliver an easy and secure mobile upselling experience. Increase your share of wallet by enabling a secure and frictionless mobile experience.
- Integrate e-signatures into your mobile app using eSignLive SDKs for iOS and Android
- How to Extend Your Mobile Banking Services with Document Signing (60 min. webcast)
Information about the Cost & ROI of E-Signatures
- How to Calculate E-Signature ROI
- According to Forrester Research, "E-signature for a small number of documents, priced on a transaction basis, can be less than $1,000 a month. Large enterprise implementations that cover dozens of use cases, hundreds of document preparers, and thousands of signed documents can be in excess of $1 million. As providers embrace SaaS, Forrester estimates the cost of a large enterprise implementation could be cut by 75%."[2]
[Vendor note: In this Forrester report, eSignLive is referred to as "Silanis". eSignLive offers an e-signature service starting at AUD 33.50 per user, per month. Get the free trial.]
Thank you to Mark Brown for sharing his story. Mark is Director at Engage Content in Sydney, Australia.
[1] Mobile Consumer Survey 2015: The Australian Cut
[2] https://www.forrester.com/report/TechRadar+Digitizing+Operational+Processes+Q2+2015/-/E-RES120623