How to make financial advice easier and cheaper to give and get

Every year, professionals from across the financial landscape gather at the Financial Advice Association Australia (FAAA) Congress. It’s the biggest event of the year for the profession, and this year’s Congress was the biggest in history.

Held in Adelaide in late November, the FAAA Congress attracted almost 1,000 financial advisers as well as esteemed speakers like the Hon Stephen Jones MP, Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services. Over three days of speciality workshops, inspiring keynote sessions, networking and fun social events, attendees explored everything from how to future-proof financial advice to the delivery of digital advice.

At the event, FAAA CEO Sarah Abood shared the organisation’s top priorities for the advice industry — much of which was centred around the growing complexities and extra regulatory requirements that advisers face, particularly in the wake of the Financial Services Royal Commission. Inefficiencies abound, and advisers are crying out for simpler and more cost-effective ways to conduct business. 

The good news? Docusign can help, making it easier and cheaper for advisers to give advice and making it easier for clients to get advice. 

If you’re in the early stages of digital transformation as a financial advisor, there’s never been a better time to start or extend your journey. Here are four reasons to jump onboard with electronic signatures:

1. They are safe and secure

When you’re dealing with clients’ sensitive personal and financial data, you need to know that the systems and processes you use are safe and secure. There are three key features that make electronic signatures a safer option than a wet signature and it’s why more and more financial advisers are turning to electronic signature.

• Robust authentication methods. Authentication is a way of identifying or validating that the signer is who they say they are. Docusign  offers many options for authenticating a signer’s identity upfront — from basic (like SMS authentication) to advanced (like Docusign Identify).

• An audit trail. Docusign's Certificate of Completion provides a full audit trail of all the signature-related actions taken in the document — like, when it was opened, viewed and signed, as well as specific details around each signer including their identity authentication method and consent to sign electronically. 

• Tamper-evident seal. A signature technology like Docusign digitally seals the document using public key infrastructure (PKI), which indicates that the document hasn’t been tampered with or altered since the date of signing and that the electronic signature is still valid. This is far superior to a wet-signed document, where pages could be swapped out or altered.

2. They are legally recognised across more agreements

A decade ago, many legal and financial transactions still required a wet ink signature. But the legislation has well and truly caught up.  There have been a number of amendments in recent years that have enabled individuals and corporations to sign and execute a much broader range of documents. Most recently the Treasury Laws Amendment (Modernising Business Communications and Other Measures) Bill 2023,  allowed for all company documents — including ASIC documents and deeds — to be signed electronically. Now Advisors can send and have more documents signed electronically with Docusign.

3. They help save time and money

Behind the scenes, electronic signatures help speed up business processes, saving you both time and money in the contracting process. In fact, four in five wealth management firms that use eSignature have reported a decrease in hard dollar costs, as well as a 41% reduction on new customer onboarding times and a 68% decrease in turnaround times for contracts.

As well as delivering monetary value in the form of cost savings and revenue gains, Docusign helps create efficiencies by improving the flow of data and  reducing the error rate in contracts — things like a missed signature or a section incorrectly completed on a form — which in turn saves more time and money, making it easier for advisers to spend time on the important things.

4. They transform the customer experience

Like every other industry and business interaction, today’s customers expect easy, convenient ways to interact. 

Docusign’s latest innovations and capabilities optimise the customer experience by removing friction and meeting customers in their preferred channels. As the leading mobile signing experience in the market, Docusign delivers a seamless digital experience from any device. Then there are other features like Web Forms for intuitive self-service; and elastic or embedded signing, which delivers an optimised, personalised signing experience that seamlessly blends into your own apps or websites.

No wonder 73% of organisations that adopt Docusign eSignature say that customer satisfaction has improved. It has really reached the point that, if you’re not giving customers a seamless way to interact with you, then you could get left behind.

Ready to get started?As the above perks prove, going paperless with your financial contracts and agreements will quickly pay off. And the best part? It’s easy to get started with Docusign eSignature. Try it for free on a type of agreement you use every day, and experience the benefits for yourself.