As startups go, digital signature services may not be at the forefront of exciting developments, but they’re getting increasingly important as major companies begin incorporating them into their workflows. Today comes news that RightSignature has landed Farmers Insurance as a client, which is huge news for the startup, as Farmers will be gradually rolling this out to serve 15 million customers. Farmers started using RightSignature in December in three states and is now up to thirteen, with plans to roll it out natiowide to service all Farmers customers. RightSignature CEO Daryl Bernstein says that to his knowledge, this is the “biggest SaaS e-signature deployment ever”. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, but Bernstein classifies it as “long term”.
Digital signatures are an interesting topic, because in some ways they aren’t really necessary — you could technically click a checkbox on an online document and it would be legally binding. Thing is, most people get really weirded out by that, which is what has helped RightSignature get traction. On both its website and through an iPhone application, the service allows customers to ‘draw out’ their actual signatures. Legally necessary? No. But clients really like it. Bernstein says that the startup initially set out with the goal of making the process more consumer-friendly (hence, the doodled signatures). But as it turns out, enterprise customers like this familiar step too.
In addition to the digital signatures, RightSignature has also recently rolled out a ‘merge’ feature that Farmers will be using. Farmers agents can now build templates for commonly used documents and designate a few areas where their clients need to fill in text (for things like name, address, etc.). When the Farmers agent sends the document to a customer, they’ll see a few text boxes where they need to enter their info, and that will automatically be inserted into the document before it’s signed.
RightSignature is getting another endorsement today from the American Bar Association, which is now featuring the product on its Tech EZ directory of lawyer-friendly digital services.
Competitors in this space include DocuSign and EchoSign.
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