Overview

Introduction

The "Document Signer Certificate," also known as Doc Signer, is an authorized digital signature according to the IT Act. It lets organizations safely electronically sign documents using their own brand name.

Unlike personal DSC tokens for individuals, Document Signer Certificates are just for organizations. Instead of a USB device like DSC tokens, Doc Signers are stored on the organization's servers. The certificate has settings set up on the server to use it for signing.

Doc Signers are mostly used to automatically sign digital documents the organization needs to sign. For example, banks and financial companies, following RBI's Digital Lending Guidelines, have to sign many loan documents daily. Regular electronic signatures don't work well for this, but with Doc Signer, they can do it very easily without any manual intervention of any person.

Use Cases

Here are the types of documents that can be signed using Doc Singer:

Lending

As per the latest RBI's Digital Lending Guidelines, the following documents needs to be digitally signed by the REs:
- Key Fact Statement (KFS)
- Sanction Letter
- Summary Of Loan Product
- Account Statements
- Privacy Policies Of LSPs/DLAs with respect to borrowers data
- Terms & Conditions

Here is an excerpt from the RBI's Digital Lending Guidelines -

Insurance

Electronic signing of insurance policies by the insurer, generated on the server.
Isnurance claims being signed electronically by the organizations.

Banking

Savings bank account opening forms being digitially signed by the bank
Current account opening forms being digitally signed by the bank

General

Bulk signing of agreements, vendor agreements, insurance claims, invoices, e-way bills, offer letters, etc.
Automated signing of recurring bills such as mobile bills, DTH bills, etc by the organizations.

Doc Signer Class 2 vs Class 3

Document Signer Certificate are of two classes - Class 2 and Class 3. Listed below are the key differences between the class 2 and class 3 based certificates.

Areas	Doc Signer Class 2	Doc Signer Class 3
Assurance Level	These certificates will be issued for both business personnel and private individuals use. These certificates will confirm that the information in the application provided by the subscriber does not conflict with the information in well-recognized consumer databases.	This certificate will be issued to individuals as well as organizations. As these are high assurance certificates, primarily intended for e-commerce applications, they shall be issued to individuals only on their personal (physical) appearance before the Certifying Authorities.
Applicability	This level is relevant to environments where risks and consequences of data compromise are moderate. This may include transactions having substantial monetary value or risk of fraud, or involving access to private information where the likelihood of malicious access is substantial.	This level is relevant to environments where threats to data are high or the consequences of the failure of security services are high. This may include very high value transactions or high levels of fraud risk.
Software/Hardware Based	Softwared Based	Hardware Based
Security	High	Highest