Northwest Multiple Listing Service Chooses Authentisign™ for Electronic Signatures
Instanet Solutions announced today that Authentisign™, an integrated digital signature platform, has been selected by Northwest Multiple Listing Service as its ESIGN product-of-choice. Northwest MLS is one of the nation’s largest MLSs, servicing more than 22,000 real estate brokers in Washington state.
“The opportunity to serve Northwest MLS and its members is a privilege,” said Martin Scrocchi, Instanet’s President & CEO. “They have an industry-wide reputation as a technology innovator, and many other MLSs around the country look to Northwest MLS for leadership in choosing and implementing advanced technologies. We feel great about having been selected as their vendor and business partner.”
Tom Hurdelbrink, Northwest MLS’s President & CEO added, “Authentisign will enable our members to provide their clients with a secure and efficient method for electronically executing contract documents. Authentisign will be tightly integrated with our existing forms platform, making it easy for our members to facilitate paperless transactions. Instanet has been a very flexible partner helping Northwest MLS to foster its culture of innovation.”
Northwest MLS plans to implement the Authentisign service beginning in the fall of 2011. Users will pay a nominal monthly fee.
More than 10 years ago, the ESIGN law was enacted when U.S. President Clinton signed the E-Signature bill giving the same legal validity to an electronic signature as a signature in pen and ink. As real estate brokers and consumers become increasingly comfortable with the security and authenticity of electronic signatures, MLSs and Associations are rapidly embracing this technology.
Authentisign? Really? I applaud the fact that we are finally getting electronic signatures but aren’t most of us using Docusign? Authentisign better be pretty awesome for me to let go of my beloved Docusign…just say’in.
Kirsten – I think most of the active real estate Brokers in the are using Docusign and will continue to do so. From what I’ve heard, Authentisign is not near as robust a service as Docusign and the decision by NWMLS to create an alliance with them was more political than anything else. NWMLS is “broker-owned”, while most MLSs nationwide are Realtor-owned. That made it difficult for NWMLS to justify to it’s non-Realtor member base a relationship with Docusign, who has close ties to the National Association of Realtors. I think it’s wise to hang on to that Docusign account and see where this goes. My guess is the market will ultimately decide and the best service will prevail.
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It’s good to see a new platform for our industry.
I would be surprised if Docusign loses any customers in the NWMLS service area. They have a great service and it is tied to programs like Zipforms which make it really accessible. It will be interesting to see if this new alliance gets more agents using e-signatures.
Our Multiple listing Service (MRIS) just released e-mails to all members endorsing and offering Authentisign. If you sign up the cost is 69.99 for the year which is a lot less then my paying 19.99 a month through Docusign. They don’t offer a trial free so that you can test run it, which is disappointing. One of my colleagues signed up and sent me a sample to sign. It worked pretty well, but it is not as user friendly as Docusign when it comes to client use. I called Docusign and let them know that Authentisign was being offered to MRIS members at a huge discount rate and would docusign offer a discount. The answer was pretty much No. I cancelled my paid subscription and will use the free one (up to 5 free transactions) until i figure out which is best.