Electronic execution: Difference between revisions

So  — unless your [[Financial instrument|instrument]] is one of those peculiar contracts with formal execution requirements — and most [[confirmation]]s, instructions and even master trading agreements which pass between the operational teams of financial institutions won’t be<ref>Exception: anything signed as a [[deed]]: [[security financial collateral arrangement]]s tend to be, for example, or [[trust deed]], [[guarantee]] or a [[master agreement]] ''containing'' a [[security interest]], such as a [[prime brokerage agreement]].</ref>  — it needn’t be that complicated. Generally, a [[digital signature|digital signatures]] will be fine and, really, ''better'' than a handwritten signature, especially a scanned, emailed [[facsimile]] of a handwritten signature which can easily be forged.  

Now. ''Any'' signature is simply a means of gathering and recording evidence that the person providing it agreed to the contract or gave the instruction that it sits under. It is an [[audit]] trail. It is [[due dilly]]. You will only need it should your counterpart ''deny'' it agreed to the [[contract]], or gave the instructions. In most contexts that arise between professional financial services firms, this is highly unlikely to happen. The argument will not be to the ''fact'' of the contract, but to its ''terms'', the ''meaning'' of those terms, and what informal accommodations the parties subsequently made to each other that might modify them. Parties tend not to deny the existence of contracts they have been happily performing until the moment of the dispute. The moment one does, or confects a claim that the ''actual'' bargain is different from how you wrote it down on this piece of paper — that is the moment where your counsel, {{jerrold}} pulls out your agreement, slaps it on the registrar’s desk, pointing his spittle-flecked fat little fingers at your adversary’s ''signature''.  

So how would {{jerrold}} feel were his dramatic reveal not a dog-eared [[contract]] with a hastily-appended scribble on it, but a time-stamped, [[distributed ledger]]-registered digital record auditable back to the two-factor authenticated assent of each counterparty’s authorised officer? Most well-adjusted counsel would say, “rather better”.

It doesn’t matter if it is a hand-inked signature scratched on onion skin with a quill and waxen seal, a two-factor-authenticated digital signature or, for that matter, a series of unambiguous semaphore messages from a person atop a distant hill whom you sincerely and plausibly believe to be your client. If it ''is'' your client, and you have a record of its assent, however communicated, it will be hard for your client later to claim the contrary.