Car Dealerships: Streamlining processes with eSignatures

Published: Friday 18th February 2022

With new car registrations having plunged a whopping 28.7% in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic, car dealerships are one of the many industries who have faced huge changes over the last few years.

Restrictions on retail and non-essential businesses meant that shoppers swapped to online browsing, forcing auto dealers to digitalise perhaps quicker than they would have liked. What’s more, electric vehicle purchases skyrocketed in 2022 to account for more than one in six registrations.

With all of these drastic changes, it is essential for car dealerships to modernise and streamline their processes in order to keep up. Discover how this can be achieved through digitalising paperwork and migrating to electronic signatures.

Payment documentation

There’s a lot of documentation associated with both new and used car purchases. Whether a customer is buying a car through Hire Purchase or Personal Contract Purchase, or funding their payment via a bank loan – the customer has many documents to sign. These include:

Purchase agreement
V5C registration document
Proof of purchase

With electronic signatures, customers can sign on any device, from anywhere. After a leading automotive e-commerce firm reported cars purchased through its online platform increased by 1228% in 2020 and have since predicted this method to be “the new normal”, signing on-the-go is a particularly handy feature. Signees can even upload ID photocopies and scans easily to an electronic signature platform.

What’s more – electronic signing offers a high level of security for all users. When it comes to documents with sensitive information, this is crucial.

Warranty

New cars should always come with a warranty and it is recommended that someone buying a used car should take out a warranty too.

These are legally binding documents that assure the buyer that the product is without defects.

Since the passing of EIDAS regulations in the UK, documents can be digitally signed and are considered as equally legally binding as handwritten signatures. Essentially, this means that should anything happen to the vehicle (and it is covered in the warranty) the digital document will be fully legitimate when making a claim.

Driveaway car insurance

Usually car dealerships partner with a third party to offer driveaway insurance for those purchasing a car in person. This is often an afterthought in the excitement of buying a car, so the need for this to be signed quickly and easily feeds into the overall experience of the customer.

Electronic signatures offer a faster, more streamlined signing process for all parties. With dealerships and insurance providers being able to choose from a number of templates or existing documents to send, the end-user signing experience (and therefore overall customer experience) is improved.

Proof of purchase

When the deal has been reached, it’s important to get a receipt. This should be signed by both parties and kept as proof of purchase and payment for records.

With an electronic document, the signee simply downloads after signing for their own records. Not only does this save on paper (think of the planet!) but digital documents are simply easier to store and far harder to lose.