In the modern global business world, organisations face an increasing number of security, audit and authorisation challenges. To simply manage their day-to-day operations, they are typically required to authorise multiple corporate officers or staff members, at different levels of seniority and spread across multiple locations, to manage their various corporate relationships and transactions. Entering binding contracts, making and approving payments are just a few critical business transactions that would require the signature of an authorised signatory.
Authorised signatory management, therefore, requires effective and constant control over both the identity of individuals authorised, and the scope of authorisation. If an authorisation process fails, the organisation may be responsible for unintended contractual arrangements or, at worst, exposed to a risk of fraud.
However, the current process of authorised signatory management is mostly manual, paper-based and inefficient. It often involves manually collecting individual signature data through PDF or other paper-based forms and collating it into Authorised Signatory Lists (ASLs) that are also usually stored locally in PDF format. In addition to being costly in terms of time and effort, the manual aspect of the process makes it highly prone to human error and mismanagement.
With the recent major shift to remote working and the increasing adoption of e-signatures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, organisations face even higher risk of signatory fraud and unauthorised signing. How can organisations ensure their e-signatories are appropriately authorised?
A comprehensive internal process, accompanied by sophisticated signatory authorisation technology, can significantly reduce the risks associated with managing signatories and increase the enforceability of digitally signed records.
Download our latest special report to learn what an authorised signatory is, the different types of authorised signatories, and more about the evolution and importance of authorised signatory management in today’s digital world.
The report also includes opinions and perspectives of leading industry experts across different industries, as well as real-life examples and case studies.