Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC)

The Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC) is a crown corporation devoted exclusively to entrepreneurs. BDC helps over 60,000 entrepreneurs with flexible financing, advisory services, and specialized investment services.

Learn how BDC enabled entrepreneurs to apply for commercial loans digitally using e-signatures:

“At BDC we're focused on small and medium sized businesses. We realize that one of the best ways to help entrepreneurs is to accelerate the financing process. As a crown corporation, we have to find ways to differentiate ourselves from different banks. We're mandated to innovate, so we have to focus a lot on customer experience by providing loans faster than different banks would.

We've also tried to innovate a lot with mobile applications. We've been giving iPads to all of our account managers, and we're giving apps to boost their productivity and how fast they can respond to any client request. One of the most successful mobile applications is called Express Loans. This application aims to help account managers close a loan within 15 minutes. The only way we could have done this is through e-signature.

E-signature transformed the customer experience because now we can get the client the help that they need in the time that they need. We really feel like we've changed the entrepreneurs lives.

With this technology, the account managers (who are usually on the road), save a lot of time. When the account manager gets into a room, they first review all of documentation shoulder-to-shoulder with the client. The account manager then passes the iPad to the client, who receives an SMS on their own phone with a security code that they enter on the account manager's iPad. The client then taps to sign and the signature process is completed. Finally, the client receives everything by email.

The ROI in this initiative is very high, considering we've done over 4,000 loans within the past few months to approve around half a billion dollars. OneSpan Sign has helped our account managers save over 26,000 hours of work.

We tapped into the success of the mobile application to use e-signature in all different processes at BDC. So, our next step was to integrate e-signature in the client space, which is our portal where clients can go by themselves and get loans of up to $750,000 through the web. So far it's been a very successful initiative, and we have rolled out about eight applications. All those applications are geared to improving the efficiency of the loan and the advisory service selling with the account manager; always putting the entrepreneur in the center.

Bringing OneSpan Sign to the other products that BDC offers is definitely going to be part of our next steps as we try to bring e-signatures to all of the different transactions we offer to help entrepreneurs.”

Jorge Oliviera, Director of IT Solutions Delivery, BDC