US Top Ten bank moves to error-free signing of consumer and small business loans with Silanis e-signatures

MONTREAL, CANADA, September 10, 2010 (Press-News.org) Silanis Technology today announced that a top ten commercial bank in the United States is moving to error-free signing of consumer and small business loans across its 3,025 retail branches. This leading commercial lender has integrated Silanis' enterprise electronic signature platform with its Consumer Loan Operations (CLO) to keep the loan application process electronic, and eliminate the errors and many ancillary problems that are caused by manually presenting and signing loan documents in paper format.

"After successfully piloting ApproveIt Web Server at a number of their retail branches, the bank is now rolling out Silanis' solution across its 3,000+ locations," said Tommy Petrogiannis, chief executive officer and co-founder of Silanis. "The bank is expecting to eliminate nearly all processing errors from the 2,000 loan applications it receives each day. This will have a profound impact on their operations, competitiveness, and bottom line."

The CLO group is responsible for imaging and verifying 26 million loan document pages each year to ensure that they comply with the bank's policies and industry regulations. Prior to implementing e-signatures, this entailed making sure that no documents were missing from the loan package; that customers had signed and initialled in all the right places; and that the loan amount, dates, rates and payment structure corresponded to what was approved by the bank's loan origination system.
When an error was detected, the loan package was sent back to the bank representative in charge of the file as an exception, who then often had to schedule an appointment with the customer to have the error corrected, resulting in a negative customer experience. Sometime errors were missed altogether, thereby creating downstream legal and compliance risks. Loan applications were also scanned into electronic format for storage, and the transaction data was manually rekeyed into other business systems in order to complete fulfilment and initiate loan servicing.

"The CLO group had leveraged technology to the fullest extent possible with imaging and automated workflows," said Petrogiannis. "The only thing left to improve the quality of the loan transaction process was to extend automation to the branches using e-signatures."

By integrating ApproveIt Web Server with its loan origination system, the bank will replace these paper-intensive and manual parts of the loan application process with a fully electronic and automated process that enforces the lender's business policies and legal and compliance requirements to ensure error-free signing.

ApproveIt Web Server will execute the loan transaction electronically from start to finish, including the preparation, presentation, review, acceptance, signing and return of documents. The entire process is controlled by the web-based system to ensure documents and disclosures are presented to customers in the correct sequence for electronic review, acceptance and signing, while preventing the loan package from being returned if it is missing documents, data or signatures. The electronically signed documents are immediately available to all bank personnel and back-operations for further processing.

By ensuring loan applications are correctly executed the first time around and before funds are disbursed, the bank expects to reduce virtually all future processing errors and downstream risks; improve customer satisfaction; give back 95,000 hours to bank personnel so they can service more customers; and eliminate 80% of the shipping, scanning and auditing of loan documents.

Moreover, the bank will strengthen its legal position and demonstrate that they have met or exceeded all government and industry regulations thanks to the strong electronic evidence and transparency provided by Silanis' solution.

Unlike a paper-based process that only produces a signed record at the end of the transaction, ApproveIt Web Server records and reproduces the entire transaction from start to finish proving exactly what took place. This includes all documents and on-screen text that were presented to customers, how long they spent on each page, and all actions that customers took during the transaction, including consenting to disclosures and signing / initialling documents.
Silanis' solution will also enable this leading lender to immediately update and push out any changes in regulatory requirements, business rules, and product terms and conditions that affect loan processing across it 3,025 retail branches in real-time.

"A key criteria for selection was being enterprise-ready," said Petrogiannis. "The solution hooks into the bank's existing infrastructure and enables it to easily customize the e-signing process for its business, legal and compliance requirements. The initiative has laid the groundwork for future expansion across all of the bank's line-of-businesses, products and channels at minimal cost and effort."

Running on the IBM WebSphere Application Server, ApproveIt Web Server pulls documents generated by Adobe LiveCycle that are stored in the IBM Filenet system .The roll-out of ApproveIt Web Server involves equipping each branch with an electronic pad to capture borrowers' hand scripted signatures, and training bank personnel on how to guide customers through the web-based, loan application process.

About Silanis
Silanis Technology Inc. is the leading provider of Electronic Signature Process Management solutions. The world's largest insurance and financial services companies, major government agencies, integrators and service providers depend on Silanis to accelerate business transactions and reduce costs while improving compliance with legal and regulatory requirements. The company's electronic signature platform, ApproveIt , is an enterprise-class e-signature process management solution that transforms paper-based business transactions to all-electronic, Web-based processes for e-commerce and e-government. Visit us on the Web at silanis.com