Banks, business groups call for electronic signing and witnessing to be made permanent

ABA says consumers would be the big winners if the changes remained in place past the initial six-month time frame.

ABA CEO Anna Bligh. Picture: AAP

Banks, real estate groups and business associations have banded together to urge state and federal governments to make permanent the short-term measures brought in at the height of the COVID-19 crisis that allow legal documents to be signed and witnessed electronically rather than in person.

Australian Banking Association chief executive Anna Bligh said consumers would be the big winners if the changes remained in place past the initial six-month time frame.

“The onset of COVID-19 has meant fast tracking moves right across the economy to a paperless, contactless digital way of conducting business,” Ms Bligh said.

“We’re calling on both federal and state governments to make these changes permanent in order to keep the ease, keep the lower cost and reduce the hassle of transactions which rely on wet signatures and paper documents.”

Alongside the ABA, the Business Council of Australia, the Australian Institute of Company Directors, the Council of Small Business Organisations, the Financial Services Council, the Real Estate Institute of NSW and the Australian Property Institute also called on both state and federal governments to make the changes permanent.

The business and property lobby groups will write to each member of National Cabinet to make their case on why these changes should stay beyond the six-month time frame.

Governments in NSW, Victoria and Queensland, alongside the federal government, recently passed emergency temporary legislation that allows certain legal documents to be signed electronically and witnessed over video call as opposed to the traditional “wet” signature previously required.

While the action taken by the federal government centred on the Corporations Act, and allows company directors to electronically sign company documents, state government legislation has been mixed, with NSW changing laws to allow for documents to be witnessed remotely, while Victoria and Queensland have modified laws to allow deeds, wills, statutory declarations and mortgages to be signed and witnessed electronically.

Commenting on the action taken at the height of the crisis, Business Council of Australia CEO Jennifer Westacott said governments had moved quickly to suspend outdated, unnecessary and job-killing red tape that was making it harder to do business.

“As we recover, we should all ask ourselves at every step of the way, will bringing back these regulations help keep costs down for consumers or help make Australia an easier place to do business and create new jobs?”

Ashurst Partner Jock O’Shea said the industry was hopeful the temporary changes at the federal level could be made permanent, while also raising the prospect of the government dealing with the special provisions around deeds.

“Given the swift response of the federal government and the positive reaction we’ve had from our clients, we would think that the federal government would be responsive to making the changes permanent and at the state level we would hope that the advocacy by the ABA and other organisations would encourage them to make changes as part of simplifying doing business in a post-COVID-19 environment.

Mr O’Shea said the impact of the changes for his clients, most of which are large corporates, was they could spend less time worrying about the minutiae of signing documents correctly and spend more time getting on with transacting in Australia.