Turning Mama Bear's Biggest Bottleneck Into Its Smoothest Step
When a kid turns 18, most parents suddenly realize how little legal standing they have if something goes wrong: no say in a medical emergency, no way to help with a bank account, nothing. Mama Bear Legal Forms exists to close that gap, mainly through a Young Adult Power of Attorney Package that hands that authority back to a parent. The catch is that every document in that package has to be notarized to count, and for months, notarization was the one step standing between a worried parent and real peace of mind. It was also the step most likely to cost Mama Bear a customer.
meeting conversion rate
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A product built on trust, slowed down by its own verification step
Getting through the process itself needed to be simple: fast identity verification, fast notarization, nothing that made a stressed-out parent or a distracted 18-year-old want to quit halfway through.
The first hurdle was identity verification itself. Mama Bear's process relied on knowledge-based authentication (KBA), the quiz-style questions pulled from a person's credit history. That model runs into an obvious problem for an 18-year-old: most of them don't have a credit history yet.
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, more than 80% of 18- and 19-year-olds are "credit invisible" or have credit files too thin to score, meaning the data KBA depends on doesn't exist for most of Mama Bear's customers). Every failed KBA check meant a stalled session and a frustrated customer at exactly the moment Mama Bear needed to build trust.
The second hurdle was witnesses. Many customers didn't realize they needed one until they were already in the process, and college students especially struggled to produce one on short notice from a dorm room.
Notary inconsistency piled onto the challenge as well. Notaries sometimes misunderstood witness requirements or delivered a service that didn't match the smooth, digital-first experience Mama Bear was building. On the worst calls, a young signer would hang up not entirely sure whether the notarization had actually worked.
Replacing a weak link with verified identity and on-demand support
Mama Bear brought in Proof to rebuild the verification and notarization experience from the ground up. Instead of asking an 18-year-old to answer questions about a credit history they don't have, Proof verifies identity against a government-issued ID, closing the exact gap KBA couldn't for young signers.
Proof's remote online notarization platform also removed the manual friction Mama Bear's team had been managing by hand: no more scanning, no more printing, no more coordinating a notary's schedule against a customer's availability. Sessions run end to end inside Proof, with a documented, defensible audit trail behind every completed notarization.
Mama Bear is also rolling out Proof's on-demand witness network to close the last remaining gap in the process. Rather than asking customers to track down their own witness, a requirement that had been driving the bulk of Mama Bear's cancellations, Proof can supply a witness inside the same session.
Proof's coverage has occasionally outpaced expectations, too. "We warned a customer it wouldn't work in Pennsylvania, and then it did," one team member said. "At this point, the ID check is really the only gate."
Fewer failed sessions and a smoother path to "yes"
The shift from KBA to true identity verification brought immediate results. Mama Bear's identity verification failure rate dropped from 18% just 3.5%, with meeting conversions reaching 98%. The sessions themselves also got faster. Average meeting times have consistently run under five minutes, with notary wait times averaging just 7 seconds.
The team has felt the difference directly. "It feels good to have the first big hurdle, the identification, behind us," said Niel Nielsen, Co-Founder, describing customers who are now getting approved through their driver's licenses instead of stalling out on credit-based questions. Reviews have echoed this feedback too.
"We're getting a lot of great reviews on Google," the team said. "Someone actually asked if they could get in touch with Proof directly, because they wanted to thank somebody there."
A stronger foundation for what comes next
For Mama Bear, fixing notarization did more than clear up an operational headache. It removed the one step most likely to cost them a customer, and it gave a worried parent one less thing to think about at exactly the moment they needed reassurance.
AI tools and free templates can produce a document. They can't produce a verified identity, a witness, and a notarized record in one sitting, and that peace of mind is the gap Mama Bear is now positioned to hold.
See how Proof can modernize your identity verification and notarization workflow >
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