Banking made easy – complete documents with a single signature

Absa, one of South Africa’s biggest and most respected banks, has the goal of helping people achieve their ambitions in the right way. To reach their objective, one of the bank’s core values is to put their customers and clients at the centre of what they do.
With this in mind, Absa partnered with Impression™ in August 2011 to improve the customer journey by reducing the number of signatures required to complete a document, while ensuring the process is still compliant.
“By embedding Impression™ into our customer services and sales in our branches and providing the use of digital signatures, we have seen significant benefits to cost and efficiency in our processes,” says Debbie Visser, Project Manager, Group Technology at Absa.
Because the documents are ‘sealed’ digitally, it means customers and consultants only have to digitally sign the document once with Impression™, reducing the need for signing multiple pages or multiple documents for one product or service.
This saves time and money for customers and consultants when dealing with account applications, enquiries, account limits, cards, FICA documents and products including savings, loans and investment vehicles. With the process being more efficient and convenient, customers and consultants now have more time to explore more products than would have previously been possible.
Although it is simpler than traditional, physical signing procedures, the digital process is still secure and fully compliant with all relevant legislation and requirements.
“What sets Impression apart is its security features, including the fact that you cannot copy and paste the signature, it is totally sealed in, preventing fraudulent reuse,” says Visser.
With Impression™, Absa is able to store all documents in a digital global customer database, drastically reducing printing costs and the need for physical storage and retrieval.
Visser says another benefit of the partnership between Absa and Impression™ is the support provided by the Impression™ team to ensure optimum uptime of the service.
Andrew Papastefanou, Founder of Impression Signatures, says he is proud to have been a part of improving the customer journey at Absa and looks forward to the next stage of their journey together.

Impression™ provided the following benefits to Absa and its service providers:

• Savings to cost and efficiency – digital documents are ‘sealed’, reducing the need for multiple signatures to just one.
• Improving the customer journey – because fewer signatures are required, the customer experience is improved and they have more time to explore other products.
• Security and compliance – digital signatures are embedded into the document with advanced security features to prevent fraud and tampering. The process is fully compliant with all relevant legislation and are legally recognised.
• Printing and storage – all documents signed with Impression™ can be stored in Absa’s digital, global customer database, reducing printing and storage costs.
• Support - Impression™ works with its partners to ensure optimal uptime.