Bankwest introduces e-signing for home loans

Digital signing service can slash home loan application times, bank says

A digital signing service will potentially reduce home loan application times from almost a fortnight to a matter of days, Bankwest says.

The bank today said that it had rolled out e-signing for loan documents. The service supports signatures using a smartphone or a PC.

“Customer needs are changing fast and we’re prioritising investment in our digital and broker offering to ensure we can continue to meet customer and community expectations,” Bankwest executive general manager of customer experience, Andrew Chanmugam, said in a statement.

“Currently it takes around 13 days for a new home loan to be ready for settlement but with digital signing this can be reduced to less than four working days for new home loans and to within 24 hours for increases to existing loans.”

“E-signing enables customers to sign and return their documents in a matter of hours and the e-signature can even be made on a smart phone; it’s simply a better experience for customers.”

Although bank documents can be signed electronically, land title offices still require mortgage forms for property purchases and refinance transactions to be printed.

Bankwest’s head of third party banking, Ian Rakhit, said that the system gave brokers greater visibility over which documents have been issued and when.

“Thanks to the digital signing service, seconds after a new home loan is confirmed, e-documents will be sent to the broker for review and then to the customer for e-signing,” he said.

“In addition to the faster turnaround time, the new secure service maintains an electronic audit trail - a key request from brokers - and allows for faster amendments if any errors are found.”

Bankwest says the new service will help cut its paper usage by 2.3 million pages per year.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia subsidiary last year credited a shift to Agile ways of working (a program Bankwest has called ‘Blaze’) with the ability to quickly ship new digital services.

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