Equity One, a leading non-bank financial services provider, partnered with Docusign to streamline operations, enhance security, and reduce environmental impact—significantly improving client satisfaction as a result.

Equity One is a leading non-bank financial service provider and fund manager connecting commercial borrowers with retail investors for property-related loans. Prioritising conservative lending practices and long-term stability over rapid growth, Equity One carefully manages risk and maintains a quality portfolio of clients.

But even the most responsible businesses are not immune to operational burdens. Equity One needed to ensure they had the necessary infrastructure, processes, and compliance measures in place to support sustainable growth. A key component of this was its document management process.

Looking to refine this, Equity One turned to Docusign. We sat down with Dean Koutsoumidis, Founder & Managing Director at Equity One to hear how Docusign helped streamline workflows and revolutionise client engagement.

Liberating the lending process

Before adopting Docusign, Equity One was mired in inefficiencies. As Dean described, “It was literally a mailroom operation... doing a big mail run to the post office every day with stacks of envelopes.” 

Every investor, for every transaction, has to sign a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS). Equity One staff had to physically mail out these substantial documents to each investor for every transaction. 

“We were drowning in paperwork. Imagine one transaction with six parties involved – we'd be sending out stacks of paperwork, including pre-addressed, stamped envelopes for them to return the signed documents,” said Dean.

The manual system, required by compliance regulations, was not only labour-intensive but also unsustainable in terms of cost and environmental impact. Clients shared this pain, often feeling guilty about the extensive paper wastage. 

"As things got faster, they had to become express post envelopes and it became very expensive as well. Not to mention the environmental impact.” Dean continued. “Plus, it was just a ruling inconvenience for everybody—our clients were also becoming increasingly frustrated with the paper overload"

Dean and his team would be printing out and posting multiple copies of these often 90 page documents, which every year would get longer as compliance requirements increased.

Now with Docusign, what was an archaic process leading to long turnaround times is now a simple single-day turnaround, saving the team 2,650 hours in manual administration and $286k in costs per year.

Where compliance meets confidence

With a focus on compliance and security, Docusign introduced enhanced measures that reassured both the organisation and its clients. 

Dean explained, "There's a whole raft of regulations that we have to comply with... whether we're dealing with the investors and identifying them, for any money laundering purposes and for the source of their funds and all the other obligations that we have.”

The adoption of digital signatures and features like two-factor authentication reduced the risk of fraud, ensuring compliance with stringent regulations and providing clients’ peace of mind. “We’re much more comfortable in identifying or tracing the original source of where that document went, who signed it,” said Dean.

This enhanced Equity One's compliance and security through robust authentication, electronic signature verification, and audit trails, reducing fraud risk and ensuring adherence to financial regulations. The secure digital storage of documents also reduced the risk of confidential information leaking as a result of a data breach, resulting in a more secure lending process. 

"With Docusign, we've significantly reduced the risk of fraud and boosted our compliance. It's a win-win for us and our clients,” Dean added.

Making the leap to leadership

The Docusign integration marked a pivotal shift for Equity One, offering a digital solution that not only addressed compliance and operational challenges, but pushed them beyond their comfort zone and into a position of leadership.

Dean recalled, “We had to make a decision… to innovate and lead our clients.” Equity One's adoption of Docusign is a shining example of how intelligent yet simple digital solutions can have far-reaching impact on a business and its clients. 

"The wonderful thing about Docusign was that it really wasn't resisted. In hindsight, I am very pleased that we took that approach to roll it out with everybody,” said Dean.

Equity One’s commitment to responsible transformation has not only enhanced their own operations but also set a new standard for the lending industry.

“We can't imagine what this business would be like without the Docusign solution... it's impossible to do business without it," Dean concluded.