Electronic Compliance: A Feasible Goal?

Insurance Networking News, December 1, 2012

Pat Speer

ESIGN - The electronic signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, 15 U.S.C §70001 et. seq., the federal electronic signature law.

Tamper Seal, Tamper Seal Signatures and Tamper Evident Signatures - A digital signature applied to an electronic record in a way that the record can be verified to ensure that no changes have been made to the electronic record since the seal was first applied.

UETA - The version of the Uniform electronic Transactions Act, as published by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform state laws and enacted in 47 states, as of the date of this paper (ill., N.Y. and Wash. being the three that have not enacted UETA).

Many Still Hesitant

Insurers Tend To Understand The efficiencies to be gained by moving to a digital environment, but some still are hesitant to adopt electronic documents. "Companies such as Docusign, e-SignSystems, Cabinet and Silanis have been beating this drum for years to insurers," explains Patrick Hatfield, partner at law firm LockeLord LLP. "But it requires investment, and if their move to digital includes e-signatures, it also includes new thinking about internal workflows as well as how they will be dealing with their channel."

Insurers with captive agents, or strong distribution networks, are pursuing digital and e-signature policies and technologies that can be extended out to the channel. for carriers relying on non-captive agents who represent as many as 10 other carriers, it's another story.

"A couple of the technology vendors come at this from the agents' perspective, which helps," Hatfield says, adding that he believes that the competitive advantage, along with needed changes in agency management systems, will also help change the tide.

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