In our business, the chain of custody (i.e. audit logs and where the software runs) is the most important security aspect. Not one of our bank clients seem inte

In our business, the chain of custody (i.e. audit logs and where the software runs) is the most important security aspect. Not one of our bank clients seem interested in digitally signing their documents, or otherwise "baking-in" any sort of non-repudiation aspect at the PDF-level. For their business, non-repudiation is realized as an emergent property between document cold storage, core system records, and exquisitely-detailed audit trails (also committed to document cold storage). For us, the biggest question that comes up for our customers is the variety of signature specimen we intend to work with and how it will be applied to the final documents (the ones the bank would take to court): 1. No signature captured at all. 2. Signature captured using adoption of a machine-generated specimen. 3. Signature captured using touch, mouse or stylus. 4. Signature captured using a paper specimen & CCD. 5. Actual wet signature on paper with in-person presence required. Option 1 seems to be the most popular with the latest wave of online banking products. Option 3 is the happy path for our in-branch product, but we have some cases fall into the Option 5 bucket as well - typically only when all signers cannot be present simultaneously for non-consumer accounts. Depending on the liability associated with the customer/account combo, the required quality of the signature specimen could vary. Some of our customers will allow for basic consumer accounts to be opened with minimal backing documentation because the limits on those products are relatively low (and relative volume is VERY high). For business customers & accounts, we are in a completely different universe. You take that stuff a lot slower. Businesses are typically much more understanding when you say you can't give them an active account right now. The most important foundation to all of this is Know Your Customer (KYC). That entire process is designed to ensure that whoever you are pulling into the core system is exactly who they say they are, so that all subsequent business with that individual can be correctly attributed to the appropriate natural person. Once you have a 'hardened' customer information file, you can start to do scary business because you are now reasonably-confident you could win in court.