United Bank of Michigan added electronic signatures to its Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. coverage solution through its digital signature provider IMM as more bank clients became concerned about insurance following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank last month.

The $850 million, Michigan-based bank saw an influx of demand for its FDIC coverage solution through IntraFi’s ICS and CDARS program, a solution the bank has offered for 15 years, Eric Soya, vice president of branch operations at United Bank of Michigan, told Bank Automation News.

The solution “becomes popular when there’s something in the news that really has people focused. … With everything in the news [with SVB], we had several customers who were concerned about FDIC coverage,” he said.

While the solution isn’t new, the bank had not implemented eSign capabilities to get clients onboarded, he said, noting that through its newly migrated eSign provider IMM, the bank could add eSign capabilities quickly.

“I was able to build a workflow and build a document template and have that ready to go in less than an hour.”

In the past, the bank would have had to prepare paperwork, get clients into the branch or deliver paperwork, he said. Now, the paperwork is sent to IMM eSign, then directly to the customer’s email. “For those customers that were sensitive to FDIC coverage, we could have that paperwork signed and back in our hands in a matter of minutes.”

Integrating IMM’s solution

The bank has been working with IMM since 2018, Soya said. He said that during the migration, the bank had to reallocate resources before completing the project.

Typical implementation of IMM takes “anywhere from 60 to 90 days,” Michael Ball, senior vice president of markets and strategy for IMM, told BAN. “There [are] no custom integration requirements or specialization we have from one customer to another. We just configure our system to the particular system that the institution is using.” United Bank of Michigan’s core provider is Fiserv.

The bank was previously working with another eSign vendor but wasn’t “getting the support we needed,” Soya said, noting that “working with a more nimble company [IMM], they are able to take suggestions very seriously. … That helped us quite a bit.”

For example, the bank recommended implementing some eSign processes to the in-branch experience, including the rollout of signature tablets, he said. “When someone comes into a branch, we’re still using those IMM workflows for routing documents.”

Changing eSign providers allows the bank to continue on its digital path, Soya said. “Being a smaller community bank, embracing new technology has been something that’s always been a part of what we do.”