How to easily on-board customers 100% online with an EU-Legally Binding Digital Signature

For European service providers, on-boarding new customers can be challenging and risky. At the same time, it can be annoying for customers: within the EU, legally binding signatures are required to sign agreements or documents. Businesses are therefore pressured to provide reliable, secure and better customer services, while at the same time reducing cost and risk. How can banks, energy providers, insurance companies and other service providers make sure this digital signature is legally binding, without turning the process into a hassle for clients?

While clients will certainly feel safe knowing service providers are doing everything to keep their details safe, they will not appreciate a tedious on-boarding process. And they will certainly dislike visiting a local branch to sign or having to redo the whole process because a signature turned out to be not legally binding.

Easy on-boarding

So, if a service provider wants to obtain a legally-binding digital signature in simple and secure way, it should request a customer to sign an agreement using his or her digital identity – also known as a digital certificate. While this may sound like it requires a lot of work on the clients’ side, this does not necessarily have to be the case. On the contrary, Indorse can make it very easy for service providers to on-board customers with an EU-legally binding digital signature as per EU regulation – eIDAS.

Secure, remote identification

In order to be able to offer this to users, Indorse started a partnership with Intesi, an Italian, EU-approved Qualified Trust Service Provider that generates the digital identity/certificate required for this process. This does not need to happen in advance: only once a new customer is required to sign the agreement will Intesi start the identification process. This all happens remotely and online, allowing the client to stay at his or her location: the process follows procedures specified by ETSI, one of three officially EU recognized European Standards Organizations.

Seamless integration

When the identification process is successfully completed, the client receives a digital certificate and can then digitally sign the Service Provider Agreement through Indorse. Then Indorse will then automatically notify the service provider about the signed agreement – allowing the on-boarding process to continue.

The seamless integration of Intesi and the Indorse platform is important: lots of businesses are competing to provide the best customer experience. Only going digital is not enough to stand out: banks, energy providers, insurance companies and other service providers need to make sure the user experience is as good as it can be. This means their solution should enable them to quickly on-board new clients – without any hassle or time-loss.