“e-Notary is fundamentally a set of APIs. Microsoft Azure API Management gave us the building blocks to deliver great functionality quickly on a scalable, secure and trusted platform for businesses nationwide.” - Tom O’Connell, Veroha Partner and AIS President
Veroha offers a cloud based electronic notarization “e-notary” solution that meets all notarial state regulations nationwide. Veroha was cofounded by a long-time Microsoft partner, Applied Information Sciences (AIS), who developed this e-notarization solution on Microsoft Azure API Management. Companies may now digitally notarize documents anywhere in the United States through a singular secure system. Veroha is working with their customer, the State of Delaware, to set new standards and simplify the notarization process.
Customer Business Challenges
The notarization process is resource intensive and time consuming. With over three billion notarial acts happening each year, many financial service organizations have to process hundreds of daily notarizations.
For companies currently using e-notarization, they are faced with a different set of challenges. They must meet every e-notarization law and regulation for each state the company does business in, many of which have different requirements. In the end, e-notarizations can require the same amount of time and effort as paper notarizations.
Revolutionary Solution
Under Delaware law, electronic notarizations may be performed anywhere in the nation by electronic notaries registered in the state, including employees of banks, mortgage lenders, insurance companies, federal agencies and law firms. Since the law was enacted, the State has worked with Delaware-based Veroha to develop a secure, cloud-based platform to enable electronic notarizations and assign a unique number to each notarial act. After years of development, testing and auditing by third parties, the e-notary system is now ready.
Veroha’s business partner, AIS, built the State of Delaware’s e-notary services in Azure and deploys the solution to support third party technology providers and financial services companies. Veroha holds the intellectual property and administers the system on behalf of the State of Delaware.
Improving Efficiency and Security
“Electronic notarizations offer businesses many advantages,” said Rick Geisenberger, the Chief Deputy Secretary of State. “Because hard copies are no longer required to authenticate a signature, companies no longer need the expense, inconvenience and risk associated with warehousing paper documents. Furthermore, unlike paper documents, digital documents cannot be altered after they are notarized electronically. This “non-repudiation” feature is a safeguard against fraud and has many applications beyond the traditional use of notarization for legal documents.”
Ease of Use
This solution allows companies to utilize an integrated, secure e-notarization product with clients, completely omitting the need to spend time printing, scanning, and mailing documents. Tom O’Connell, a member of Veroha’s senior leadership team and AIS President emphasized, “The major benefit is time and removing friction from the process to reduce error.”
Benefits of Azure API Management
Azure API Management provided an easy route for developers to incorporate electronic notarization capability within their application using the eNotary API’s unique capabilities. Vishwas Lele, CTO of AIS, states, “Going to Azure API Management actually simplified the process...it’s a great fit for us.” API Management saved them time from writing code as it was already built. Lele explained, “Once we landed on Azure API Management, it was easy to design, develop and integrate the solution. There wasn’t much of a learning curve. Since we are built on the Azure platform and the features we were looking for were available, it just made sense to build on top of API Management.”
AIS also benefitted from the developer portal and analytic capabilities that Azure API Management offers. Developers consuming the eNotary API are able to get started quickly and self-manage through the portal. Analytically, Azure API Management has the ability to categorize transactions conducted by each entity and provide an accumulative score of how many notarizations take place. API Management also enables the use of policies to enforce quota and rate limits without writing custom code.
Looking Forward
Today, the e-notary solution is available as an API. “In the future, we see developing Office 365 add-ins to seamlessly integrate eNotary into the workflows between financial institutions and their clients,” said O’Connell.
Solution Benefits:
- Saves time
- Reduces cost
- Eliminates error
- Improves workflow
- Non-repudiation
- Safeguard against fraud
- Increased customer control