Sometimes it’s difficult to believe that it was more than two decades ago – 1999 to be precise – that the Uniform Law Commission approved the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act, proposing a model law for the states that would admit e-signatures and electronic records into the law of the land. To date, all 50 states have adopted UETA or similarly written laws.
That was quickly followed by Congress passing the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) in 2000.
In spite of these noble efforts, when remote online notarization (RON) came along, it became a slog to get some state legislatures to approve this valuable tool that is so integral to electronic mortgages.
Then along came COVID.
Legislators scrambling to keep their respective real estate markets afloat realized that RON was not only a way to keep real estate moving in their states during the COVID pandemic, but in fact soon learned that it is in fact a safer way to conduct real estate transactions.
If you aren’t using RON just yet, or if you are unsure how to present this option to your clients, consider these security advantages of remote closings.
In a traditional closing, a notary identifies the signer manually, by requiring a photo ID. As RON was being developed, state law required heightened security for this new platform, so most eClosing technology requires multi-factor authentication (MFA), identity verification and credential analysis that is far more secure.
One such security feature is knowledge-based authentication (KBA), which is a way of authenticating the signer’s identity by asking the answer to undiscoverable or out-of-wallet questions, such as: What make and model was the car you owned in Utah in 2007? What street address did you live at when you were 10 years old? Which of these phone numbers have you previously used?
One of the often-underemphasized benefits of remote closings is the sheer accuracy of the process. When you are toiling through the traditional signing, initializing and checking off boxes for a paper closing, it is easy to miss something. But in a RON closing, missing signatures and unchecked boxes are immediately flagged so that you must complete the process to move on.
As anyone who has ever run an all-paper closing in the past knows, the biggest challenge is keeping track of the complicated list of documents to be signed and financial documentation provided by the signers, including employment verifications, signed contracts, insurance documents and so on. By placing all of this information into a secure electronic vault, you eliminate the risk of showing up at the closing only to discover something is missing.
Most significantly, RON closings are recorded, eliminating the dangers of identity theft and providing a visual record of the entire process.
Most importantly, while paper documents can unfortunately be altered or tampered with, digital documents stored in a secure and encrypted platform are tamper proof, providing a level of document integrity that is simply not available in the old paper formats.
Want to get started today with RON? At Network Transaction Solutions, we connect our clients with electronic notarization closings using RON technology. Call us today to learn more.
