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First of all, have Happy Diwali!
In this Roundups, we bring to you some important product and regulatory updates to make your paperless journeys even easier and more secure:
- An in-depth look at Schedule 1 and what it means
- What does Leegality raising 5Mn mean for its customers?
- Collect wet signatures electronically with Sign Upload - a new way to sign documents
- Automatically transfer completed documents with SFTP
- New and improved NeSL flow
- Stronger admin controls to ensure that your users only use Workflows
- RBI Instructions on Locker Facilities and what you need to do to comply
Leegality raises $5M Series A funding from IIFL Fintech Fund
Leegality has raised a USD 5 million Series A Round led by IIFL Fintech Fund. Mumbai Angels Network also participated in the round.
Over the past few years, our Document Infrastructure Platform has been enabling Indian businesses to digitally transform their document/agreement logistics in a fast, easy and compliant way - turning a painful process into a competitive advantage.
Today, we are live in 1500+ top Indian businesses - including group entities from 8 out of the top 10 banking conglomerates in India.
Since 2020, we’ve grown our quarterly revenue by over 13x and our employee strength by 7x, while also being cash flow positive.
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IT Act has been amended!
Amendment to the First Schedule of the IT Act: What this means for you
A much awaited amendment to the First Schedule of the IT Act was finally passed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
Prior to this amendment, key BFSI sectors like secured lending, construction/housing finance, gold loans, wealth advisory etc. could not digitize their critical processes because of the First Schedule of the IT Act. The First Schedule prevented the digital execution of critical documents (mortgage deeds, home loan agreements, DPNs, PoAs etc) that these sectors relied on for core business processes. While processes like KYC, origination, repayments and collections became digital – documentation remained physical.
With the passing of this Amendment, BFSI companies can now digitally sign and stamp:
- DPNs and Bills of Exchange
- Powers of Attorney
- Contracts for the sale or conveyance of immovable property or any interest in such property
What this means? No more paper-based paperwork.
Our BFSI clients like Tata Capital Housing Finance have already eliminated paper from over 80% of their flows before this amendment. Here’s what Sahil Palejwala, National Manager - Digital and Strategic Initiatives at TCHFL had to say about digitising paperwork before the amendment -
"We've been grappling with this problem for a very long time. But you have to digitise what you can. You have to simplify what you can. There are certain things which are beyond your control. So you know that will remain physical. If something is not permitted by law, I cannot really go ahead and overrule it. But having said that, I think the whole idea is to ease out. So I'll give you an example on a disbursal automation piece. Today, the amount of work that a guy does on preparing the docket is 2 to 3 hours on a month end where he is absolutely rushed with targets. Nowwhat happens in those 2-3 hours? He has to fill that document manually, which is 40-50 pages long. So there is a huge scope of risk, human error etc., that's one. The other is, there are 15 or so documents in those 50 odd documents, which will require stamping. Which means he'll have to go to a lawyer and procure those stamp papers, or go to the IGMR website to procure e-franking. It's a time consuming activity. That's the second part. The third part is notarization. And obviously the fourth part is getting it signed by the customer. And the fifth part is getting it signed by the counterparty within TCHFL because the salesperson’s sign is not valid. He'll have to get it signed by a credit manager. So out of these 5 problems I can solve 4. IT Act doesn’t permit me, that's fine. If I’m solving 80 out of 100, I still feel it's a big plus for us."
You can read more about how TCHFL eliminated paper from their paperwork using Leegality here.
If you are a BFSI company looking to get started with digital paperwork for these documents, write to us at enquiry@leegality.com
New RBI Instructions for Banks on operating locker facilities and how to comply with them
On August 18, 2021, the Reserve Bank of India issued the Safe Deposit Locker/Safe Custody Article Facility provided by the banks - Revised instructions (“Locker Facility Instructions”). These instructions lay down the law on how banks are required to operate locker facilities and interact with customers who have availed/wish to avail this facility.
Amongst other things, a significant change that has been introduced is that all banks must renew ALL their locker agreements with existing customers by January 1, 2023. While this is a huge logistical nightmare for most, Leegality users will find this extremely easy to comply with.
You can visit our Locker Facility page for FAQs and read more about the new legal changes and how Leegality can help you comply with them easily.
Collect eSignatures that look like wet signatures with Sign Upload
Banks and financial institutions often compare the signatures on any document with the signature saved with them in their records. But this is not possible to do with electronic signatures since they look nothing like the physical wet signature.
With our newest eSign offering, this is no longer a problem. With Sign Upload, your customers can upload the image of their wet signature while signing the document. Compared to eSigns, even your customers might be more comfortable and used to uploading a picture of their physical signature to execute documents digitally.
Leegality then backs it up with security procedures of traditional digital signatures that ensure the identity of the signer is authenticated and the eSigned document remains tamper-proof. Here’s how it works:
With SFTP, your documents will be automatically transferred to your own servers within 15 minutes of execution (once all the parties have eSigned).
Legal and Compliance teams recommend that companies should keep their documents on their own server for security. Currently this is being done either manually or with API integrations.
With SFTP Integration you can transfer completed documents (once all parties have eSigned) automatically to your server (without the need of an API integration) with a simple one-time integration.
SFTP provides the following benefits over the traditional way of transferring documents:
- No need to do an API Integration - API integration takes time and requires the bandwidth of your tech team. Compare this to SFTP, which can be done by business teams themselves within 5 minutes, directly on the Leegality Dashboard.
- ZERO errors - Zero manual intervention, and therefore, ZERO errors. Downloading and uploading each document manually is problematic and time consuming. Even a single error means lost documents. With SFTP, this is not a concern anymore.
You can learn more about SFTP on our blog here.
And not only transferring documents, with Leegality you can assemble documents in no-time as well! You can learn more about our document assembly solutions here.
New and improved NeSL flow
We’ve upgraded the Leegality NeSL Suite with some visual and verification changes to the sender journey. These changes will make it faster and easier for people operating the Leegality dashboard to send out documents for signing via NeSL -
- Intuitive UX/UI to make sending the document a smoother journey
- Form has been divided into smaller sections to help with information verification for all dependent fields
- All errors are now visible in the form instead of one at a time to help you send documents faster
You can watch a detailed walkthrough of the new and improved NeSL flow here.
Prevent non-admin users from sending documents that aren’t configured in the Workflows
Admins can now disable New Document flow for all non-admin users. This ensures that each user can only execute documents that are configured in the Workflows and no other document is executed through Leegality.
Please note - This has no impact on API flows.
If you're interested to know more about any of these product updates, IT Act amendments or want to go paperless with Leegality, write to us at enquiry@leegality.com and our team of document experts will help you set up a customized demo. If you’re an existing Leegality customer, you can simply reach out to your account manager.
