United Bank of Michigan

United Bank of Michigan, headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has 13 branch locations spanning across the western Michigan area. The Bank, which was founded more than a century ago, manages more than $850 million in assets and is a leading small business lender in the community.

United Bank of Michigan saw the inherent value of eSignatures in enhancing customer experiences and streamlining back-office operations. They initially selected a generic eSignature solution due to name recognition and prevalence in the marketplace. However, the Bank quickly realized the disadvantages of partnering with a large organization seeking to be the universal eSignature provider for every company across every industry.

This legacy eSignature provider claimed to have an integration with the Bank’s core processing platform, Fiserv Premier, along with its content management suite, Fiserv Director. However, Bank employees were never able to get the integration to work correctly. It became quickly evident that the provider lacked the knowledge of Fiserv products and the critical role this key business system played in the overall banking environment.

With little to no support from the legacy eSignature provider, the solution’s usage was minimal. Indexing and archiving was time-consuming, involving multiple manual steps, and the technology was languishing.

Bank executives recognized that a change was needed, especially as they committed to accelerating their digital-first strategy. After meeting IMM at the Fiserv user group forum and learning about the solution, Eric Soya, Vice President of Branch Operations at United Bank of Michigan, decided to pursue a partnership with the company. The initial eSign demo for banks showcased the seamless interface between IMM’s technology and the Bank’s account opening system, Fiserv Business Process Manager (BPM).

Although interested in IMM, Soya was hesitant to partner with another eSignature provider due to the lack of ROI with their current solution. “Sales demos always showcase the best possible scenarios. We had multiple demos of IMM’s solution, asked a lot of questions and kept waiting for an issue to arise; however, we never got to that point,” Soya explained.

IMM’s enhanced interfaces with Fiserv products, individualized support team, and sole focus on the banking industry led United Bank of Michigan to switch from a generic eSignature solution to IMM’s flagship eSignature platform, IMM eSign.

United Bank of Michigan reported immediate results, including the ability to complete transactions faster while delivering an enhanced, more engaging experience to customers in both remote and in-person environments.

Soya described the convenience that eSign offers by saying, “The customer doesn’t have to be in front of us to sign the document. They don’t have to mail a document in for a signature or print or scan and email it back to us. We can serve customers and collect signatures in whatever way is convenient for them.”

From an in-branch perspective, IMM eSign allows bank employees to email the completed document to the customer rather than hand them a printed copy, further protecting any sensitive information or data and allowing the customer to leave the branch without a clutter of paper copies. From a remote standpoint, leveraging eSign speeds up the process and employees can turn transactions around much faster.

With IMM eSign, United Bank of Michigan enjoys seamless connectivity with Fiserv Director. Previously, employees had to take additional steps to manually archive and index finished documents, which was time-consuming and inefficient.

In addition to the interface with Director, United Bank of Michigan benefits from the BPM interface as well. Employees leverage BPM primarily to generate forms related to account opening. However, Soya noted that the Bank also uses BPM for various other forms, such as address changes, product changes, signing up for a new debit card and more. Soya continued, “Prior to implementation, the signing process took quite a bit of time and required sorting through all the documents, determining what needs to be signed, walking through customer disclosures and more.” With IMM eSign, the process of signing many documents is expedited in a quick and easy fashion with an electronic delivery of copies after the fact.

IMM and United Bank of Michigan continue to have a mutually beneficial relationship. When describing the Bank’s experience with IMM, Soya said, “It’s been a great relationship. I feel strongly about IMM being a great resource and good vendor.” By employing IMM eSign in conjunction with its Fiserv Premier product suite, United Bank of Michigan has been able to modernize customer experiences, streamline previously time-consuming processes and successfully advance their digital initiatives.