An Introduction to Remote Online Notarization with DocuSign Notary

Notarization is an important part of critical transactions in our daily lives—for example, when making beneficiary changes to your 401K or processing an insurance claim. In fact, over a billion documents are notarized each year in the United States. Despite this volume and prevalence of notarization, the process itself has not evolved much, with the majority of notarizations still being performed manually and in person today. 

This traditional, paper-based notarization process presents several challenges for your organization—slowing the pace of doing business, increasing risk of manual errors, delivering a poor signer experience, presenting a greater risk of identity fraud and ultimately, increasing costs overall.

Our goal is to help eliminate these challenges, transforming the notarization process into a fully digital experience. That’s where DocuSign Notary comes in—it’s the trusted way to remotely and electronically notarize agreements. It gives your notaries public the tools they need to securely conduct remote online notarization (RON) transactions via an encrypted audio-visual session. With DocuSign Notary, you can:

• Provide a convenient experience for your signers, as they can now remotely sign and notarize agreements. This saves them the time and logistical hassles of meeting a notary public in person. 
• Mitigate risk with a robust audit trail with a tamper-evident Certificate of Completion, audio-visual recording and electronic journal
• Have greater confidence in your signers’ identities with secure identity verification and knowledge-based authentication technologies

All of this is built on DocuSign eSignature, making it easy for you to send, sign and notarize agreements all within DocuSign.

Bringing Notary to life with a power of attorney agreement

Let’s look at how this works when an insurance provider needs to remotely collect a notarized signature from a claimant. An auto insurance provider receives a claim from an individual who has been in an accident and whose vehicle has been deemed a total loss. The claimant needs to sign and notarize a Power of Attorney (POA) document for the insurance provider in order to take back ownership of the vehicle and close the claim.

With DocuSign Notary, the claimant can now sign and get their POA notarized electronically and remotely — removing the hassles of meeting in person and saving time for both the signer and the company. The insurance provider generates the POA agreement and invites the claimant and notary public to a secure, interactive audio-visual session. From there, DocuSign Notary guides both parties through the identity verification, signing and notarizing process. Within minutes, the notary public and claimant are able to meet, sign and notarize the document, completely remotely.

Watch the video below to see this in action with fictional insurance provider Tally Insurance!

Learn more about DocuSign Notary and click here to learn more about how e-signature laws and principles laid the foundation for remote online notarization and the benefits it brings.