How to Make eSign Friendly: 12 Fixes for Your Forms

Findings from real deployments and what your forms might be missing.

Most eSign tools work fine …until the form hits the workflow.

In real-world deployments, forms turn out to be the source of surprising complexity and friction: complications, manual work, and a less-than-ideal signer experience.

At Tapp, our deep dive into eSign vendors revealed common form-related issues that no single platform fully addresses. This journey led us to develop an add-on solution specifically designed to integrate with your existing eSign platform and fix these insurance-specific form needs. This article outlines 12 common form complications we’ve encountered and provides practical fixes to make your eSign forms truly effective.

The Real Complications and How to Solve Them

Optional Fields can significantly complicate the eSign experience, often leaving signers confused about whether they need to populate them or not. This ambiguity can lead to incomplete forms or frustration.

To address this, forms should

• Provide clear instructions on whether these fields require input.
• Offer multiple versions: a standard form in addition to a second signable document designed without the field for those who don’t need them.
• Leverage a web front-end to pre-fill data fields before the signing process to ensure only relevant fields appear on the form presented for eSign.

Optional Signers can create a challenge for single signers who may not be able to complete a form designed for multiple parties, such as a policyholder and a spouse. By offering two paths for signing, carriers can ensure a smoother, more intuitive experience for all policyholders, avoiding confusion and unnecessary steps for those without an optional signer.

Forms with Multiple Uses may be trying to do too much. Historically, insurance carriers designed single forms to serve multiple purposes - primarily to reduce the number of physical forms agents need to manage. This creates unnecessary complexity and confusion in a digital eSign environment. The most effective fix is to break documents into distinct, single-use versions. This simplifies the eSign process ensuring clarity for signers and efficiency in workflows.

State Dictated Requirements vary by state and forms often fail to account for that leading to compliance gaps. For instance, a national form might list a spouse’s signature as optional, even if it’s legally mandated in the issue state. To address this, carriers can utilize different field location templates on the same form, dynamically identifying and displaying fields relevant only to a particular state. This ensures all necessary state-specific information is captured digitally, maintaining compliance without creating multiple versions of a base form.

“Circle” the Correct Answer on forms often don’t translate effectively to digital eSign environments creating confusion for signers. When these fields are converted directly, they lose their intuitive nature. The fix is to replace these question types with structured digital inputs, such as dropdown menus or radio buttons. This ensures clear, unambiguous selection options, streamlining the eSign process and reducing errors.

Forms That Rely on Notes in the Margin pose a problem because marginal notes cannot be captured reliably online. Review your existing signed forms to discover whether people are writing in these unstructured areas of the document. The fix is to use structured overflow fields on an addendum page, redirecting these extra details to labeled addendum fields. This ensures all information is captured in a consistent and retrievable digital format.

Forms That Rely on “Attach Additional Pages” create inefficiencies because supplemental pages often lead to upload gaps and delays in a digital workflow. This manual process disrupts the seamless eSign experience. The fix is to add structured addendum pages directly within the eSign flow to capture overflow information. This allows the system to auto-route extended input to a tagged addendum, ensuring all necessary details are captured digitally and efficiently.

Fillable Fields Without Enough Space often result in input getting cut off or crammed into unreadable formats which can lead to errors or incomplete data. The fix is to route overflow text to a structured addendum. This ensures that full text can be captured and mapped to a labeled addendum slot preventing truncation and maintaining data integrity within the digital form.

Conditional Fields may show up for policyholders who won’t need them confusing signers and complicating the eSign process. Ideally, these fields should display only when triggered by prior answers ensuring relevance and a streamlined experience. The fix is to use dynamic visibility tied to input rules. For instance, eSign features can be configured to enable fields only when a specific checkbox is selected ensuring forms adapt intelligently to signer input.

Crossing Out and Initialing directly on a form can break digital workflows and compromise audit trails in an eSign environment. This undermines the integrity and legal validity of the electronic document. The fix is to eliminate in-form corrections entirely. Instead, if changes are needed, signers should be instructed to cancel the current session and restart or be reissued a clean form ensuring a clear and compliant digital record.

Agents Using Their Own Accounts can create significant problems: off-platform signing breaks compliance and tracking for the carrier. This practice makes it impossible to ensure consistent data capture and maintain a complete audit trail. The fix is to centralize signing through a carrier-managed, controlled system and simultaneously simplify the process. By making the official system easy and intuitive, carriers can better engage agents, encouraging them to use the approved system and ensuring all signatures adhere to compliance standards.

Two Signers Sharing an Email Address which is not an uncommon occurrence when, for example, spouses share an email account. Some eSign vendors may not allow it as they often require a unique email address for each signer. The fix is to ensure all signers have a unique email address. For Gmail accounts, this can be achieved using the ‘+’ functionality, such as example+husband@gmail.com and example+wife@gmail.com, which allows distinct identities while still routing to a single inbox.