Switzerland’s largest retail bank pioneers service digitization, increases document security and enables a fully mobile digital user experience 

Shortly after the launch of their joint centralised solution for Qualified Electronic Signatures (QES), Cryptomathic and SwissSign today announce the completion of a major deployment at UBS, Switzerland’s largest retail bank.

As one of the world’s largest banks, UBS is transforming its services through digitization and now offers clients the convenience and efficiency of remote electronic signatures that provide the same legal value as a handwritten signature. The QES service is deployed via Cryptomathic’s Signer solution and supported by SwissSign’s Qualified Certificate Authority services.

UBS’ retail and wealth management clients can now utilise the secure signing service through their E-banking and have the freedom to digitally sign legally binding documents at any time on any device, from anywhere in the world.

Andreas Kubli, Head Multichannel Management & Digitization, UBS Switzerland, comments:

“Previously, our clients had to print, sign and send documents manually for compliance reasons. Now they can do it in a smart, easy and time-saving way. Thanks to Cryptomathic and SwissSign, customers can sign their contracts digitally in e-Banking – while meeting all legal and compliance requirements.

The Cryptomathic and SwissSign QES solution has enabled UBS to move more of its services online, pioneering a superior and fully mobile digital user experience while enhancing security and control of its document management. As an added benefit, the financial and environmental costs of managing millions of paper documents have also been reduced significantly. By digitizing the entire customer journey, UBS has become one of the first banks globally to deploy a QES service on such a large scale.

Cryptomathic Signer is a remote signature solution and the main component of the QES infrastructure deployed with UBS. Signer offers centralised digital signature services in a secure, convenient and cost effective fashion, where users’ signing keys are protected using Thales e-Security n-Shield hardware with EAL 4+ certification. UBS clients can use their existing strong authentication means and can sign from the award-winning e-banking channels with no need for additional tokens or PKI cards. The unique Cryptomathic What-You-See-Is-What-You-Sign (WYSIWYS) technology ensures that users can only sign a document that is presented to them if the document is genuine and has not been tampered with.  

SwissSign, a leading Certificate Authority (CA) provider in Switzerland, partnered with Cryptomathic to deliver the complete QES solution. SwissSign delivers the Qualified Certificates in accordance with Swiss signature law (ZertES) and EU regulations (eIDAS). Other components include the OCSP services, certificate management and Qualified Time Stamping services.

Click here to read the full case study on how UBS deployed their qualified electronic signature service.