Driva Launches a Hassle-Free Car Loan Process with DocuSign

Driva offers Australians the perfect auto loan match in minutes. What gives this startup the confidence to make such a bold promise? From day one, Driva has taken a “digital-first” approach supported by DocuSign solutions. The company first deployed DocuSign eSignature to collect signatures on loan agreements. When business rapidly increased, Driva implemented DocuSign Click to further improve the customer experience, by simplifying acceptance of Terms and Conditions during the loan application process. DocuSign enables Driva to continue offering a seamless digital customer experience while growing its revenue at a much faster rate than its headcount, offering a truly self-serve experience using a broad suite of DocuSign products.  

Digital from day one

Although Driva has only been in business since 2019, its customers have already come to expect a hassle-free experience as they apply for auto loans. After taking one minute to complete an online form, they can review the pricing options available to them while the company performs a soft credit check. Driva then selects finance options based on rates, features, and customer priorities. The customer completes an application and signs it online. 

When Driva first launched, paperwork simply wasn’t an option. The company immediately looked for a solution that would enable a frictionless digital loan application experience.

“DocuSign was the obvious choice,” recalls Michael Ko, Head of Product, Driva. “It’s the industry standard in Australia because our lenders use and accept DocuSign-signed documents. Our only other possibility was to start our business with paper contracts, but that was the opposite of the kind of company we wanted to build.” 

Rising concern over the COVID-19 pandemic only confirmed Driva’s decision. There was little chance consumers would want to meet a Driva employee face-to-face and provide wet signatures. Even long-established lenders that had always required wet signatures were making the shift to digital workflows. 

“The lending business in Australia has a digital future,” says Ko. “DocuSign eSignature gave us a comprehensive solution with great flexibility. We knew we could get started on basic functionality within a few days and add more complex features later as we needed.”

DocuSign Click enables greater automation

From day one, DocuSign eSignature made it easy for Driva to collect signatures on loan agreements. But the company soon found itself with a problem that most startups would envy: volume increased so much that administration became a bottleneck. For example, the company had been manually generating privacy consent forms, sending them to customers for signatures, and then sharing them with lenders. Hoping to automate this step, Driva implemented DocuSign Click. 

“We needed a workflow that would allow our customers to read through the pages of a consent form online and then sign electronically,” recalls Ko. “The DocuSign Click API provides the capabilities we needed to get up and running within a couple weeks. It continues to save a lot of time for our staff while enabling a more seamless customer experience—and we’ve still only scratched the surface of what the platform can do.” 

With the help of DocuSign, Driva has launched the simple, transparent car financing process its founder envisioned. The company strives to get customers through the loan process as quickly as possible. DocuSign Click enabled Driva to shave 5 to 10 minutes off the turnaround time for each loan application—while strengthening compliance. 

Conversion rate rises

“This is an intensely competitive industry and customers will jump if your process feels like a hassle,” explains Ko. “We measure conversion rates at various points in our funnel. After adding DocuSign Click, we increased our conversion rate by 3%. The system also gives us a secure paper trail of who signed what, so that we can avoid those contentious situations where a customer shows up to get their car but we’re missing signatures.”

Driva hopes to continue growing rapidly. But thanks to the efficiency DocuSign enables, the company won’t have to increase its operations headcount at the same rate as its revenue. 

“Our rate of growth depends on how many loan applications our staff can get through in a day,” concludes Ko. “With DocuSign, we’ll continue finding new ways to shave inefficiencies off our processes so that we can handle more business with a similar-sized staff. It’s one of the key platforms that’s driving our success.”