BioSignature. Naturally, it's signed!

Implementation of biometric signature at Santander Leasing
The Client

Santander Leasing – experienced provider of business financing

Santander Leasing is a company with over 20 years of experience, a leading leasing company in financing vehicles, machinery and equipment. It offers services to small and medium business as well as corporate customers. It employs 700 people and the value of financed fixed assets exceeds PLN 11 billion. Together with its related company, Santander F24, it is also developing products for individual customers. The number of Santander Leasing customers has already reached more than 70,000, and the company signs more than 40,000 contracts and lease loans every year.

The Challenge

Paperless with biometric signature

Out of concern for the environment, Santander Leasing has decided to abandon paper contracts and introduce only electronic versions to simplify their conclusion and improve the customer experience while speeding up by more than a half the average contract handling time. And in addition to increasing the security of the contracting process and customer data while maintaining the formality of document signing. A digital yet classic solution was to emphasize the company's innovativeness and position it as a pioneer in the Polish leasing market. Digitization was supposed to reduce the cost of paper, printers, postage, and archiving.

The digitization of lease contracts has meant profound changes in workflow processes. From preparing them and making them available to customers to shipping and archiving. The process of checking and launching contracts also needed to be changed.

Solution

It was decided to select the Asseco Data Systems’ proposal, utilizing Certum's qualified trust services – <a href="https://www.certum.eu/en/qualified-electronic-seal/" style="color: #5ec1b0" target="blank">electronic seal</a> i and time stamp biometric signature based on Xtension's signaturiX solution. The project was implemented in three major phases.

The first conceptual phase included an analysis of legal, compliance, and technology issues. The quality and security of the planned solution and the needed tools had to be verified. The second, the production phase, involved changes to the company's IT systems. The document workflow process at headquarters was reorganized, and a new way of generating documents was introduced. The third phase was for testing and implementation. It involved verification of changes made and their understanding by staff, preparation of training materials for customers and the sales network, and equipping the sales network with appropriate information systems, computers, and qualified electronic signatures.

After accepting the lease terms, the customer receives digital documents for approval and signature as PDF files. The implemented solution allows them to provide a biometric signature, which is an electronically recorded graphic mark handwritten with a stylus on a computer screen. During the signature creation process, biometric features such as pressure or speed are recorded, guaranteeing the signature's security and reliability. Then the documents are signed by a company representative with their qualified electronic signature. The customer receives the signed contract and documents by e-mail and has access to them on the e-BOK24 platform.

The market advantage of the solution implemented for Santander Leasing is its integration with qualified Asseco trust services compliant with the eIDAS regulation:  <a href="https://www.certum.eu/en/qualified-electronic-seal/" style="color: #5ec1b0" target="blank"> qualified seal</a> oraz and qualified electronic time stamp, in order to secure the authenticity of the origin and integrity of the biometric signature, as well as the time of placing it.

Once the biometric signature is made, the document is "closed," and from then on, it is not possible to change its contents or use the biometric data contained in the signature placed. The biometric data for the graphological analysis of the signature will always be secure and can only be accessed by a forensic expert authorized by a court or other institution.

The new solution, called BioSignature, was officially made available to customers in February 2022. After the first few months of implementation, almost 35% of agreements were already being concluded using the new signature method. Selected advisors are already signing over 80% of agreements in this format.

Benefits

The remote signing of reservation agreements

  • Speeding up the process of concluding a contract and its execution
  • Reducing costs associated with printing over 40,000 contracts each year and their archiving costs
  • Protecting the environment by eliminating the use of more than half a million sheets of paper (saving at least 50 trees a year)
  • Increased security of lease documentation

Milestones of the project

Stage 1

Conceptual phase – 4 months

  • The idea, the search for inspiration, and the decision to implement
  • Legal, compliance, and technological analyses
  • Review of internal processes for preparing and executing agreements, confirming the ability to execute them using the new method

Stage 2

Production phase – 5 months

  • Production of IT solutions

Stage 3

Implementation phase – 2 months

  • Preparation of information, training, and implementation materials
  • Supply of the necessary tools for the sales network

The project in figures

11
months – duration of the project
450
number of system users
30
Santander Leasing employees involved in the project
3
main implementation phases
We launched a pioneering and innovative project that simultaneously had to comply with demanding leasing laws. It was, therefore, creative, not reproductive work, inspired by other implementations. Although there were similar projects in the market, none of them was as comprehensive and cross-cutting as ours. Combining legal, process, and technology issues in a new business environment was necessary. The scale of the project can be measured by the number of users or even by the value – amounting to billions of zlotys – of contracts concluded in this way. I want to emphasize that all parties to the project have demonstrated a determination to achieve a clearly defined goal. We are introducing biosignatures to simplify further the way we enter into agreements. The completed implementation naturally translates into paperless operations. We generate more than 40,000 contracts each year in our leasing operations, consuming more than half a million pieces of paper. It takes at least 50 trees to produce that amount of paper. As a company, we also benefit greatly from this solution, as it increases our efficiency, reduces costs, and positively impacts our image; all this increases our competitiveness.

Mariusz Włodarczyk, <span class="rich-label">Managing Director at Santander Leasing</span>

A key challenge in the project was the lack of legislation explicitly defining biosignature issues. It was, therefore, necessary to develop a legal position in relation to the biosignature. The bill confirms that under current law, a signature in the form of an electronically made and recorded handwritten graphic mark is a handwritten signature in the legal sense. The biosignature fulfills all the functions of a signature that are considered sufficient by legal doctrine for a handwritten graphic sign to be a signature and, together with its related content, to constitute a document meeting the written form's requirements forth in the Civil Code.

Artur Miękina, <span class="rich-label">Key Projects Sales Director at Asseco Data Systems</span>

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