Berliner Sparkasse signs paperless with SOFTPRO SignDoc

[BERLIN] - 2008-09-01: Handling paper requires a lot of time and money, and capturing information from paper into an electronic format is extremely error-prone. For a lot of processes within financial institutions, there is just one reason why paper is still in use: For the sole purpose of capturing handwritten signatures. The German savings bank, Berliner Sparkasse, demonstrates that there is now a successful way to integrate handwritten signatures into an electronic document workflow. In the savings bank branches customers sign on a signature tablet. Their signatures are digitized throughout the writing process and linked together with the signed electronic document. Both signature data and document content are then stored using encryption. Encrypted documents are transferred straight into the electronic archive where the signature can be verified automatically on demand. The payment processing department benefits as well. If the customer sends in a classic paper-based transaction form, the signature image can be automatically verified with the static part of the signature reference data set captured from the signature tablet. So through this process, paper is gradually being phased out from the document workflow at the Berliner Sparkasse.

The German Savings Bank Finance Group (Sparkassen-Finanzgruppe) has prepared the implementation of paperless processes in their deposit and sales business since 2004. The internal project name is "model P" which contains the change management directives for several processes in the deposit and sales segment. At Berliner Sparkasse the processing centre Finanz IT was responsible for the implementation. Up to mid 2008, the publishing house of the German Savings Banks (Deutscher Sparkassen Verlag) has migrated more than 300 forms from paper-based to intelligent electronic digital templates.

Paperless signing is the icing on the cake of electronic workflows

As an elementary part of the sales support system, the signing ceremony is a vital component. Berliner Sparkasse is one of the early adopters to migrate to an electronic workflow, being regarded as one of the most innovative financial institutions when it comes to process optimization. However, as soon as signatures were involved, paper was printed to capture them. If a customer wanted to open an account, customer data was keyed into an electronic forms template and printed to capture the signature.

Scanning, correcting mistakes, re-capturing data, and archiving the documents produced a lot of wasted efforts in time and money. This effect of moving from electronic processes back to paper is widely referred to as "media cut". Some consultants suggested that the Berliner Sparkasse should consider refusing to use the common, widely accepted and very personal form of a proof of intent - the handwritten signature. However the search for a replacement was soon abandoned since the alternatives proved not to be feasible. In the contrary, it was recognized that processing signatures effectively and electronically offers additional cost savings potential without any efforts of switching to other means of authentication. Today, signing electronically and using Softpro's sophisticated e-signing software SignDoc is seen as "icing on the cake" for the digital document workflow.

Digitizing Signatures at the time of signing

The new solution from Softpro allows the Berliner Sparkasse and their customers to stick with the handwritten signature in their process with a major difference. In the bank’s 150 branches, customers sign on a pen pad which is called the "SignPad eSignio". The signature is captured on the display of the SignPad and instantly digitized. In conjunction with individual biometric characteristics, an electronic signature is also created when signing the document. The Bank can now authenticate the signer for the opening of an account, standing orders, exemption orders for capital gains, loans, and many other banking transactions.

The authenticity and integrity of the documents is secured through a seamless integration of the capturing device (SignPad) and the software (SignDoc). In the capturing process, the software binds the data from the signature and the content of the document, encrypts the two of them, and creates an integrity value which allows detecting any non-authorized manipulation of the document after signing. The customer then receives a paper copy of the signed contract for their own records.

Softpro's partner Wacom labels the SignPad technically as STU-500. It's an indirect hint to the fact that the pen pad has a 5 inch no-reflective TFT LC Display which is embedded in an ergonomically designed, very flat chassis. Although the device was introduced to the market just at the end of 2007 it instantly became the best-selling signature tablet in the Savings Bank's group. Demand for this appealingly stylish and robust device is huge and still growing. Users are enthusiastic about the option to display dynamically generated background images - for instance individual withdrawal receipts - incorporating individual information about the particular account holder and the transaction. The SignPad is also praised for its outstanding sharp and detailed display as well as offering excellent value-for-money.

Bodo Stüwe, responsible for the project at the Berliner Sparkasse, is convinced by SignPad and SignDoc: He adds, "We have tested several different input devices, but the SignPad has convinced us that signing digitally can be convenient, robust, secure and cost-effective, all at the same time."

The SignPad eSignio allows capturing of both the static image and the dynamic (biometric) signals of the signature unmatched in quality and reliability. The individual pressure profile, writing rhythm, and pen speed help retain the unique character of the captured signature. As the tablet delivers a superior array of captured pressure levels in combination with a high sampling rate of the captured signature data from the SignPad, it is also very reliable for usage in the dynamic signature verification processes. Signatures captured on a SignPad are proven to be very unique to the person signing, making forgery virtually impossible.

Attractive Payback

"Thanks to our new seamless workflow, we have been able to drastically reduce the amount of paper utilized for contracts," says Joachim Wagnet, responsible for all customer relations during the rollout of the electronic signature project at the Berliner Sparkasse. Project Manager Bodo Stüwe explains: "Our employee just clicks on a button in the electronic form to open a capturing window for the signature. He asks the customer to sign on the SignPad. The customer receives a print out. The document is passed on and checked for completeness. This expedited process allows our employees to spend more time with the customer. That's where every minute really counts. And in addition to this we can minimize the time a customer has to wait."

Besides the acceleration of the workflow internal studies of German financial institutions forecast cost savings of up to 2 Euro per document for paperless contracting. Because of this savings, once the system is in production, the cost of the hardware and software recovered in a very short time.

Signature data captured with the SignPad and SignDoc combo also contain additional cost-savings features. The digitized signatures may also be used to enhance the automatic signature verification in payment processing. The in-house company Bankenservice GmbH is providing this service to Berliner Sparkasse. The company runs a multi-tenant system and also processes specialized services for other banks. "As we can omit the effort of manual signature capturing, the system achieves a significantly higher level of efficiency," states Karsten Sprenger of Bankenservice GmbH. "The quality of stored reference data of signatures has increased tremendously and there are no efforts anymore for scanning, indexing, and rights allocation. This increases the acceptance of the systems among our clients. Thanks to the reduced effort of manual post-processing, it also makes the whole signature verification process cheaper. In addition to this, fraud attempts on the documents are detected more efficiently and at a lower cost to the bank."

While check fraud is a big issue elsewhere in the world, in Germany it’s the transaction forms that are frequently used to commit fraud. The German Federal Criminal Police Office has reported 18,116 cases of fraud in the segment of accounts and transactions for the year 2007, of which 72.4 percent of the cases could have been verified. For the second year in a row the amount of cases in total rose significantly, this time the increase was 32.6 percent - from 13,297 cases in 2006. Many fraud cases were based on forged signatures. Thanks to automatic signature verification a lot of these fraud attempts have failed.

Trustworthy Process

Laws for electronic signatures vary around the globe. It is important to understand that laws on electronic transactions typically include laws and regulations on Electronic Signatures. Only in some cases separate bills exist for e-signatures. Since the time when the first versions of these laws were created (e.g. 1997: Germany, Malaysia; 1998: Singapore) there was no such option as a "trustworthy capturing and verification of handwritten signatures, including static images and dynamic (biometric) characteristics" that allowed creating a reliable e-signature based on a digitized handwritten signature ("biometric signatures") in the same manner as now introduced at Berliner Sparkasse. As a consequence, laws usually reflect primarily on "digital signatures" (e-signatures created in a public key infrastructure [PKI]). However, digital signatures can simply be considered a subset of electronic signatures.

In the 1999 European Directive, a framework for electronic signatures (1999/93/EU) opened a broader technological approach to electronic signatures. Law makers are now also gradually reflecting "biometric signatures". The embedding of dynamic signature as introduced at Berliner Sparkasse results in the creation of a so-called "advanced electronic signatures".

The trustworthiness of electronic documents is closely linked to the power of proof for authenticity and integrity in the application and workflow. In addition to the option to verify the dynamic signature, this form of signature includes encryption and the option to check that a document has not been tampered with (integrity check). In SignDoc, a hash code is used for comparison. This makes it possible to detect any unauthorized modification of a document after it has been signed. Another important aspect is to ensure that the customer's signature is securely tied to the signed document. If the signature data has been modified, the document will be flagged as "invalid". In addition, the signature data cannot be transferred to other documents without detection.

The trustworthiness of Softpro's solutions is backed by the expertise of Professor Dr. Thomas Hoeren, Head of Civil Law Department, Judge for Multimedia Law at the High Court of Duesseldorf and Head of Institute for Information, Telecommunication, and Media Law (ITM) at the Wilhelms-University of Muenster. Hoeren says, "Signing with SignDoc offers a legal surrogate equivalent to the conventional method of signing with ink on paper and thus similarly fulfills the same formal intention to sign of the written paper form." In other words, electronic signatures based on SignDoc offer at least the same security as handwritten signatures on paper.

These kinds of "advanced electronic signatures" may be used in all processes that do not require a written form according to paragraph 126 of the German Civil Code. The processes are regarded as "form free". Leading experts of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology believe that around 98 percent of all business processes are suitable for this kind of e-signing. For example, the application for an insurance policy, opening of a bank account, rental car contacts, and other service protocols, as well as receipts for delivery.

Martin Grube of the processing centre at FinanzIT states, "We have screened several solutions that are available on the market. It was important for us to select a solution that does not have any compromises with regards to integration, security, and data protection. We found only a few convincing solutions which offer the potential to fulfill the specific requirements of financial institutions as well as the Savings Bank's sector. In addition to the technical aspects of the solution, a major success factor was the cooperation with a competent development partner. FinanzIT and its customer Berliner Sparkasse also put significant value in the selection of a solution partner to ensure the protection of their investment in the mid and long term."

Softpro actively collaborated in creating specific solutions for FinanzIT and implemented them, as well. The solution portfolio was optimized in a development partnership and prepared for integration into the system environment of Himalaya/FDL. As a result of this cooperation, many other Savings Banks are looking to the processing centre Finanz IT in order to support their move to a paperless environment going forward.

Mr Grube adds: "The Berliner Sparkasse has chosen Softpro's solution in combination along with Wacom's SignPad eSignio. The phases of testing and piloting in the Berliner Sparkasse delivered valuable feedback from the daily practice which were reflected promptly and reliably for the whole solution, as it is in production today."

More intense verification possible

Ralph Maute, Product Manager at Softpro says: "SignDoc offers our customers, most of them from the financial industry such as Berliner Sparkasse, the opportunity to increase their security levels. Besides the static image of the signature that is familiar to everyone from paper the SignPad eSignio captures also dynamic signals. These signals are created throughout the signing process and may be used as additional security features. The different levels of the writing pressure, speed and velocity throughout the writing process are very unique to the individual signer. They can be verified automatically on demand."

Although every signature is unique in itself, the image of a signature varies. It is possible to compare two signatures that are produced from the same person. Softpro is the only vendor of signature verification technology involved in the German Institute for Standardization (Deutsches Institut für Normung, DIN), and the national body of the International Standardization Organization (ISO). The Standard "ISO/IEC 19794-7: Biometric data interchange formats, Part 7: Signature/Sign Time Series Data" was largely influenced by Softpro's experience in research and development.
 
 

Solution Snapshot

Components of the holistic solution suite at Berliner Sparkasse are:

• Installation of SignPad eSignio at workstations to allow signature capturing
• Electronic form templates in PDFplusX-format from the Publishing House of the German Savings Banks - Deutscher Sparkassenverlag.
• Forms are provided from the Adobe LiveCycle Document Server: Savings Banks like the Berliner Sparkasse are gradually moving to a centralized, easily managed IT infrastructure leveraging Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) for electronic forms and final documents. In addition, the automated processes drive the creation, processing, printing, and archiving of dynamic forms.
• The documents based on the form templates are created and signed using Adobe Acrobat Reader.
• The technology for capturing and verifying handwritten signatures is supplied by Softpro, the world market leader in this highly specialized technology. Their popular e-Signing solution SignDoc was integrated seamless with Adobe's technology for digital signatures. "SignDoc offers an excellent addition to Adobe's portfolio, in particular our LiveCycle product family." says Hans Dahmen, Sales Manager Solution of Adobe Germany. Softpro is the only vendor for electronic signatures based on handwritten signatures that is a selected vendor for German savings banks and certified by Adobe as well.
• The captured data is stored as so-called "PDFplusX" files in the processing center of the Finanz IT
• Softpro is well known in the financial institutions for its very comprehensive solution suite to detect and prevent fraud in payment process branded FraudOne in the Northern America and SignPlus elsewhere in the world. A lot of German Savings Banks have SignPlus solution in production to prevent fraud.

Customer Profile

High-Quality Images

ID: 025 Signing on SOFTPRO's SignPad at the Berliner Sparkasse (Savings Bank in Berlin) for paperless account opening and a lot of other applications. The SignPad is a joint development with pen technology specialist Wacom and designed to work seamlessly with SOFTPRO's popular e-signing software SignDoc. This photo was captured in customer center of the Berliner Sparkasse. ~ 2,5 MB / ZIP >> Download

ID: 019 The SignPad is equipped with a 5“ display and full VGA resolution. Related texts to a document or transaction which needs to be signed– such as terms and conditions – are displayed crystal-clear. In other words: “What you see is what you sign” 4 MB / ZIP >> Download

ID: 018 Comparison of static characteristics and dynamic signals of a handwritten signature using Softpros forensic analyzing tool "Signalzye". 1 MB / ZIP >> Download

Ralph Maute, Product Manager e-Signature Solutions of the SOFTPRO Group ~ 1 MB / JPG >> Download

For additional images and logos, please visit the Image Gallery

About SOFTPRO

The SOFTPRO Group is the worldwide leading vendor of systems for capture and verification of handwritten signatures. The company is based in Boeblingen, Germany with local subsidiaries in North America (Bear, Delaware), the United Kingdom (London), and Asia-Pacific (Singapore).

The group currently employs an international staff of over 60 people, enabling more than 200 companies worldwide to streamline their document and transaction workflows.

• With its "eSign Workflow" product line, SOFTPRO provides solutions for securing the authenticity and integrity of documents within electronic processes, such as those required for legal contracts. For this purpose, a unique signature technology is used to extract and evaluate both the static and dynamic (biometric) characteristics of handwritten signatures.
• SOFTPRO’s "Fraud Prevention Solutions" portfolio provides a holistic approach to detecting and preventing fraud in paper-based processes (such as payment transactions), as well as increasing operational efficiency using signature management and verification solutions.

Since 2002, the offer to secure electronic documents with handwritten signatures extended the customer portfolio of SOFTPRO to other industries such as banking and insurance, health/pharma, retail, government, automotive and logistics.

Frost & Sullivan, one of the leading growth consulting companies worldwide, presented SOFTPRO GmbH with its "Customer Service Leadership Award 2007" for having excelled in serving its customers and gaining superior customer satisfaction levels. This award recognizes the company that has gained the best insights into customer needs and product demands.

SOFTPRO's shareholders are GE Capital (since 1998), AdCapital (since 2001) founders and management.

SOFTPRO's partners include: A2iA, Adobe, Beta Systems (Kleindienst), Disoft, Fujitsu Siemens Computers / Fujitsu, Gateway, Gijima AST, HP, IBM, Interlink, Lenovo, Microsoft, Motion Computing, Toshiba, TeleCash (First Data), Unisys and Wacom as well as APP Informatik Davos.

Please contact us for additional information: