Last year the NBG offered to the financial sector another new innovative project - e-signature implementation. The Procredit Bank was involved in this project from the start offering its clients e-signature instead of transfer paperwork and lengthy procedures for three different services. How does the e-signature system work in Georgia, how did live up to expectations and how is it being develop. Today governor of the NBG, Giorgi Kadagidze visited the head office of Procredit Bank in order to review the process of implementation of the e-signature project on site.

Procredit Bank is the first commercial bank in Georgia, which joined this NBG initiative from the very beginning and made a significant contribution to the development of this project. Today all branches of Procredit bank nationwide have fully moved to e-signature service. By implementing this new service the bank gave a unique opportunity to their client to sign certain bank operations electronically instead signing on paper. At the moment e-signature is available for any banking operation aside from the loan agreements. 

"Once the implementation of e-signature is finalized we will cancel paper operations on the operational level, cash receipts and disbursements, everything that caused queues. This is a more comfortable service for the clients, requiring much less time for the banking operation and therefore reducing queues. And most importantly this reduces bank transaction costs by 75%, which is one step forward to further decreasing interest rates. So together with being a new modern technology and future of the industry it is also very important for decreasing costs and interest rates.

Procredit Bank was the first bank to join the NBG initiative and is using modern service in all its branches and the head office. TBC Bank, Liberty Bank and Bank Republic are actively preparing to move to the e-signature. This whole procedure is in full compliance with the Euro directives. Is thoroughly protected, secure and I think, represents another important innovation. We consider the possibility to make using the e-signature obligatory for all banks within the year, unless they introduce it themselves before." - said Governor of NBG, Giorgi Kadagidze.

An important novelty is that by initiative of NBG an electronic documentation portal - www.esds.com.ge has been launched to provide access to the any electronic document created in the financial sector. The portal gives a unique opportunity, to implement the standardization of document circulation in such a way that will guarantee the safety and reliability of the access to the document. In the nearest future the e-signature is planned to be used for remote operations, fully replacing paper operations.