Bank of Queensland names DocuSign as strategic partner
DocuSign, the world leader in e-signature, has announced it has been selected by Bank of Queensland (BOQ) as its strategic digital acceptance partner to deliver end-to-end automated processes with eSignature documents in its new cloud-based digital bank.
Bank of Queensland (BOQ) is one of Australia’s leading regional banks with a 150-year history helping everyday people build brighter futures. With around 150 branches across Australia, BOQ has a reputation of putting their people at the heart of the business—nurturing long-term customer relationships based on mutual respect and understanding.
As with all complex organisations, updating and streamlining legacy systems and processes can be tricky. But the bank was committed to creating a seamless and smooth experience for customers—an outcome that required automation and simplified back-end processes.
Leaning on technology to automate and digitise their offering, eSignatures would become a critical part of this work—and DocuSign has been named as the strategic partner for digital acceptance across the retail and business bank.
We spoke to two BOQ leaders who are working to create a seamless customer experience across the business - Erin Phillips, General Manager, Group Process & Business Enablement and Michael Sokolich, Chief Product Owner, Home Lending Experience (HLx) - about how DocuSign is helping to accelerate BOQ’s digital transformation.
Building trust – and a lasting partnership
With the goal to move to digital mortgages, BOQ was searching for a range of partners to drive innovation and help facilitate the transition to a cloud-based, end-to-end digital bank.
“We had DocuSign for a number of years in procurement, legal, finance and people and culture functions, so there was already a strong foundation of trust in place,” Michael said.
“We started to weigh up our options in terms of strategic partners and what really set DocuSign apart was their deep listening to what we needed as an organisation. The team asked us to share our business strategy, what was important to us, what our challenges were and what success looked like,” Erin added.
“The DocuSign team demonstrated the fundamentals of a strong partnership, and already we’re seeing strong results in terms of productivity, customer experience, innovation and compliance.”
Demonstrating value with a vision for long-term customer success
At the start of the digital transformation project, a proof of concept was undertaken by BOQ and DocuSign collaboratively to showcase how powerful the DocuSign solution could be in elevating the business digitally.
In simple terms, the proof of concept was a way to show the endless possibilities that DocuSign provided. The idea was to help BOQ establish a foundation for success—a framework with guardrails that would help the platform be quickly implemented, deployed, and enabled throughout the business in a controlled way.
This project was a turning point in the partnership.
“Seeing how easily DocuSign could be implemented initially, then optimised over time—and what that means for approval turnaround times and other customer metrics—were definitely positive drivers to help us make our decision to move forward with the partnership,” said Michael.
“The other thing I want to highlight is how well DocuSign fits into our broader partnership ecosystem. The pre-built integrations with other platforms make everything simple and seamless, so choosing DocuSign really made sense to us from a tech strategy perspective too.”
After presenting the proof of concept and roll-out roadmap to senior stakeholders in the bank, there was no doubt that DocuSign was the right partner to move forward with.
“That presentation really sealed the decision for us. We were able to demonstrate exactly what the experience would be like for customers, specifically the ease of use. The sentiment in the room was very much: Wow. We have to have this,” said Erin.
Immediate impact – and a bright future
Although BOQ is still in the roll-out process, the impact DocuSign has had already in these early stages is impressive.
“The platform has helped us achieve an 83% reduction in per packet costs—which is a significant drop in operating expenses considering the volume of paperwork generated each year,” said Michael.
“In terms of timings, we’ve historically experienced approval turnaround times of a few weeks. Through these digitally-led processes we’re going to get these down to one to two days—and DocuSign is instrumental in helping us address that gap.”
As with all responsible businesses, BOQ has committed to becoming a carbon neutral organisation and reducing energy emissions by 90% by 2030. DocuSign will also be a key lever to achieving these outcomes.
“eSignatures and the reduction of paper and printing will be critical to reducing our carbon footprint. Our partnership with DocuSign is giving us the tools to make sure we’re doing our bit for a more sustainable future as a corporation,” said Erin.
Creating market-leading, innovative solutions
As the digital transformation process continues, BOQ and DocuSign have plans for continuous improvement, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the world of digital acceptance.
“The DocuSign team have really hit the sweet spot with what was needed at BOQ. We’re really excited to continue to explore the possibilities outside our foundation phase—delivering innovations that some of our competitors don’t have yet,” said Michael.