Locke Lord’s Brian Casey, Partner in the Atlanta office, Authors “Where’s The E-Sign? A Primer On Electronic Signature Laws” for Law360 on August 30, 2016

During last few years, approximately 23 states passed seemingly favorable, pro ecommerce insurance laws, primarily at the behest of the personal lines property and casualty insurance industry, namely new state insurance code statutes that allow an insurer to deliver an insurance policy to a policyholder simply by posting an electronic version of the policy’s content on the insurer’s website as well as delivery by email (insurance code policy e-delivery laws).[1] While these new laws seek to establish further improvement toward moving away from paper-based insurance company operations, and the anachronistic clinging to paper for an intangible product or service, adoption of many of these new laws may not have fully considered the impact of, or their relationship to, existing federal and statebased electronic signature and transaction laws which provide the foundation for electronic delivery of documents required to be provided in writing, such as insurance policies. Essentially, some of these new laws by and large bypassed the fundamental electronic signature and transaction laws, raising questions about the effects of their interplay with the insurance code policy edelivery laws. (more)