Why insurance companies need to digitize paperwork

Insurance was once a highly traditional industry, backed by antiquated processes that had been around for decades. It took a pandemic to get insurers to fast-track their digital transformation efforts – and now, the shift is in full swing.

Today, disruptive tech solutions are being rapidly adopted by insurance players to enable business continuity, make stakeholders feel secure, and increase operational agility. 

To hop on this transformation, one of the first steps your business needs to take is to digitize your manual paperwork – and cloud-based eSignature solutions are your best bet.

Whether you are an insurance broker, carrier, or customer, adopting eSignatures is a simple way to streamline the signing process. Taking your documentation online allows you to collect approvals from anyone, at any time, from anywhere in the world. 

And by taking so many limitations off the table, you’ll be able to close contracts much more quickly and improve employee productivity.

What’s more, you can count on electronic signatures to make your document workflows more:

• Eco-friendly
• Hygienic
• Scalable
• Agile
• User-centric
• Secure
• Cost-efficient

Want to learn more? This article dives into the many reasons why insurance companies should invest in an eSignature software in 2022.

How eSignatures help insurance customers 

Whether it’s claims forms or new customer applications, insurance paperwork can be a pain in the neck. After all, there is nothing fun about printing, filling, scanning, and couriering complex documents back and forth. 

Sure, you can’t completely eliminate paperwork, since it’s a must for legal and regulatory compliance. However, even reducing the time spent on it by a little can be a huge load off for customers.

By digitizing manual purchase and claim documentation workflows, customers can sign off on insurance policies whenever, no matter where they are – in minutes.

Apart from being a time-saving solution, eSignatures make your customer’s lives easier by offering:

• More convenience: Lengthy policy documents with lots of terms and conditions can be difficult to read and understand, so it’s best not to spring them on clients at the signing meeting itself. No customer wants to feel hurried when making such an important decision, so give them the option to read the documents on their own time.

• Greater protection from infections: Today, customers are more concerned about the spread of infections via high-touch surfaces like paper, scanners, and printers.

An eSignature solution eliminates all physical touchpoints by taking the signing workflow online, eliminating the need for documents to change hands in-person.

• Increased accuracy: Insurance forms are so complex that customers occasionally forget to fill in critical sections. In the case of an omission, the insurer will have to return the form to the applicant for corrections, which significantly draws out the processing time.

To avoid errors and missed fields, some eSignature solutions offer guided signing workflows. This feature walks signers through a document to ensure that they fill out all the important fields before finalizing it.

• Enhanced document security: Insurance applications and claim forms tend to require lots of sensitive information from customers. With physical paperwork, there is always the fear of this data falling into the wrong hands. However, with an eSignature solution, all the contracts are stored securely in the cloud and can be only accessed by those with the relevant user permissions.

In addition to all of these benefits, electronic signatures reduce your carbon footprint by doing away with physical paper and courier services. As environmental issues become more important to consumers, this feature will add to the allure of your insurance company.

Why employees and agents love online signature solutions

Ever since countries first began issuing stay-at-home orders, employees, insurance agents, and intermediaries have struggled to get physical paperwork approved, which inevitably leads to delays in the underwriting and clearance cycle. 

To avoid drops in productivity, an eSignature solution can ensure that:

• Documents are quickly, remotely, and electronically signed by customers and sent onwards to any other signers in the approval workflow

• Insurers spend less time crafting individual policy and application documents by leveraging ready-made online templates
• Documents are not misplaced or sent to the wrong address
• Employees are always aware of a document’s progress and can easily send automatic reminders to signers to keep the momentum going

With an online signature solution, your document processing is extremely scalable. No matter how many documents you need to process, your insurance business can do so without hiring any additional admin staff.

Common insurance documents processed with eSignatures

• Claims forms

• New customer policy applications

• Premium payments documents

• Account change forms

• Purchase orders

• Expense reports

Why should you choose Signeasy?

Electronic signatures are a hugely popular admin tool – but not all solutions are created equal.

If you’re in the market for eSignature software, Signeasy is a simple, intuitive platform that’s designed to make paperwork a total no-brainer.

Featuring a refreshingly simple interface, we offer insurers and their customers a seamless signing experience on both desktop and mobile, no matter where they are in the world.

Since our platform is incredibly easy to set up and has virtually no learning curve, user adoption is a breeze, even for less tech-savvy collaborators.

Here’s what makes Signeasy a top eSignature solution for insurance companies:

1. Many integrations: Signeasy allows your employees and agents to sign documents without leaving their favorite productivity tools, from Google Drive to Microsoft Teams and Salesforce. Getting started is as easy as adding the Signeasy app to your existing platforms!
2. Legal validity: All quotes, proposals, policies, claims, and other documents approved via Signeasy are verifiable and legally binding thanks to the included audit trail. Compliant with international eSignature legislation like the ESIGN Act and eIDAS, Signeasy documents can stand as legal evidence in a court of law.
3. Cloud-based storage: No more desks piled high with documents. Since Signeasy is a cloud-based online signature solution, it automatically saves all of your signed documents to the cloud. Users can easily pull up any of these files whenever they’re needed, instead of rummaging through endless physical copies.
4. Encrypted documents: Signeasy protects all of your files with SSL encryption, which is the same technology used in banking transactions. Users can also secure their app login with a passcode and fingerprint authentication.
5. Guided signing: Avoid errors and omissions by clearly specifying which fields each customer or employee needs to fill out.
6. Cost savings and improved productivity: With Signeasy, you don’t need to spend on paper, ink, postage, or maintenance for your scanners and printers. Plus, your bottom line will benefit from the increase in productivity and faster closing times.

It’s never been easier to go digital

Are you an insurance professional or company who wants to improve the customer, staff, and stakeholder experience?

An eSignature solution can bridge the gap, giving you the ability to process claims and new application files quickly and automatically.

If you’re going to make the switch, be sure to do it right: choose a platform that allows for mobile signing and greater flexibility – like Signeasy.

Our simple software is also very affordable, with plans starting at just $8 per month.

If you want to try before you buy, click here to start your free 14-day Signeasy trial!