Mercury Insurance digitizes signing with DocuSign eSignature

Mercury Insurance has been providing businesses and individuals with industry-leading auto, home, business and personal insurance products since 1962. Over the company’s long history, it has expanded into 11 states with 5,000 employees and over 9,000 independent agents. 

More recently, Mercury Insurance has undergone a transformation to provide an increasingly digital experience for its customers and agents. Abby Hosseini, Mercury’s Chief Information Officer, has overseen the company’s DocuSign eSignature adoption and its successful integration with Guidewire, an industry platform for insurers. The result? More efficient, digitized processes, rapid closure of business opportunities and improved internal compliance across the board.

Adding ease and expanding with DocuSign eSignature

A decade ago, Mercury Insurance agents were frustrated by the tedious back-and-forth involving paper based processes. Every time an agent received a new business application or made changes to a customer’s policy life cycle, they had to physically send and track documents to customers who, in turn, had to complete, sign and return them. 

But eSignature streamlined this process for both parties. Agents send documents through eSignature and, within hours, customers digitally sign and return policy documents. And if some paperwork goes uncompleted, agents can follow-up with the software’s configurable automated signature reminders. This not only decreases document completion turnaround time but improves the overall customer experience as well.

eSignature helps Mercury manage its independent agents, too. Certain documentation is required when multi-carrier, independent insurance agents want to offer Mercury Insurance products to their customers. With eSignature, Mercury can quickly collect and distribute signatures to improve onboarding and license management with greater speed and improved record keeping.

Creating office space with a digital, concerted insurance workflow.

After the initial eSignature integration, Mercury Insurance wanted to similarly streamline its four different backend insurance platforms to create a more efficient digital workplace. They integrated DocuSign with Guidewire and Hyland’s OnBase Enterprise Content Management system. The three integrated systems created a paperless customer correspondence system that mail-merges forms into specific formats and sends them to the appropriate signers. Once completed, these documents are stored within Hyland and can be viewed by customers and agents alike. 

This digital storage system allows Mercury Insurance to easily file and track documents online and therefore eliminates the need for file cabinets and physical document storage systems. 

“If you walked into one of our offices a few years ago, most of the floor was occupied by file cabinets,” says Hosseini. “As a result of our paperless initiatives, we have recouped about 30% of office space over the last 10 years just by aggressively digitizing our documents.”

Increasing compliance and record-keeping with DocuSign eSignature. 

eSignature has also increased compliance for Mercury Insurance. By integrating the software into its procurement and contracts management processes, the company is able to digitally trace and audit documents to see when each was presented, signed and stored at the same time, enforcing a structured approval process. eSignature’s certificate of completion helps monitor proof of signature and track when transactions were completed, which is necessary for handling policy endorsements, claims processes and critical deadlines.

The eSignature integration allows for archival and retrieval capabilities as well. Instead of searching through file cabinets to find proof of signature on a specific document, DocuSign lets agents access everything via an online archive. 

“We were able to implement predictable enterprise workflows and approved business rules that send documents to the correct person for signature, rather than allowing the compliance and business rules to live inside a person’s head” Hosseini says. 

With the help of eSignature and its integration with other industry platforms, Mercury Insurance was able to make their core processes and compliance practices more efficient, which saved them time and money, mitigated risk, and resulted in a better experience for customers, agents, and employees. Today, paperless is at the heart of Mercury’s digital transformation journey and eSignature capabilities are at the heart of this sustainable transformation to a modern, digitally enabled insurance carrier.