Santander UK’s Digital Onboarding and Loan Fulfillment Rivals Digital-First Banks

No one said digital transformation would be easy, but overhauling more than a decade of inefficient manual processes in banking is an extraordinary feat. That was the exact challenge faced by Santander UK’s SME, Commercial, and Corporate Banking teams. With the ultimate goal of radically improving the customer experience, the bank set out to resolve two of the biggest frustrations for business customers in securing loans: the onboarding process and time to cash. 

Historically, a new customer would need to fill out one of 39 PDF forms before printing, signing, and returning it to their local branch for approval. The sluggish process took an average of 12 days to complete. But with Docusign Agreement Cloud, opening an account now takes closer to two days—and can be done entirely digitally, without the need to physically drop-off forms or send paperwork.

But that wasn’t the only issue. Once an account was opened, there was still the matter of accessing funds. Previously, the complex loan negotiation and contract completion process involved a great deal of back-and-forth across systems and between parties (the bank and the applicant), often delaying time to cash. Thanks to Docusign CLM and an API integration with nCino, the process became seamless, and signed contracts were immediately met with ready funds.

Find out how the company used Docusign Agreement Cloud and Docusign CLM to successfully transform its loan process, leaving plenty of time to focus on customer relationships, in Santander’s Docusign success story.