A Scottish Widows spokesman says: “Pre-coronavirus, our customers could already switch pension funds, increase contributions and apply for protection online or over the phone, without the need for wet signatures.
“We have now also removed the requirement of wet signatures for other requests. There may be times, for security reasons, where we need to ask for email confirmation from the customer.”
Alan Steel, chairman of Alan Steel Asset Management, says he has not yet encountered any problems with providers and signatures, and is now embarking on a three-month trial of using electronic signatures for his company’s interactions with clients.
New normal
Nucleus expects this to become a more widespread practice.
Barry Neilson, chief customer officer at Nucleus, says: “As a business we already used scanned signatures to some extent, and as a result of the current lockdown this is now being used extensively.
“We see the industry adopting this widely going forward, and after the lockdown we expect to continue to accept scans of signed documents, with the current situation accelerating our plans to provide paperless options for most of our documents.
“We are also in the process of formalising how we would accept e-signatures, but we are not going to rush this.
“Compromising our audience’s security for the sake of efficiency is not something we would ever consider, so everything is being evaluated thoroughly to see how viable the different methods of obtaining e-signatures are.”
As an industry, Mr Neilson says sending documents through the internet rather than the postal service is more efficient, and will become the standard way in which advisers communicate with platforms.
While the postal option will always continue, he added he expects most of the adviser audience will submit documents virtually from now on.
David Thorpe is special projects editor of Financial Adviser and FTAdviser
