e-Signature technology has been made available to companies that offer their employees the opportunity to lease a car through GE Capital's Personal Car Ownership Plan, which is designed to offer an HMRC-compliant, tax-efficient alternative to the traditional company car.

The online signing process is activated automatically once a car has been chosen through GE Capital's online quote and order tool and, says GE, is simple and requires no additional hardware or software to be installed.

Once the employee's vehicle order has been approved, an electronic document is generated and emailed to them. After reviewing the agreement the employee can "e-Sign" it with a single click of button. The whole process can take just minutes from beginning to end.

Key advantages include:

• It is a fast process to sign credit agreements entirely online, eliminating the time taken through conventional use of hard-copy contracts signed manually and sent through the post.

• It gets things right first time. Since the process is automated the possibility of error is reduced to a minimum.

• It's green. The process is paperless and no contracts are transported by road, rail or air.

GE Capital also says that the process incorporates sophisticated security measures, including a range of document, fraud and signature checking procedures based on technology developed inhouse.

Gary Killeen, commercial leader, said: 'eSignatures really does make the whole process of creating a credit agreement much faster and more accurate, while still achieving high levels of security.'