The short answer on a CMA-signed net worth certificate
Yes, in the narrow sense: a cost accountant in practice can put a signature to a statement of what a person or a firm owns and owes, and no Indian statute forbids it. The absence of a bar is not a right of acceptance. Most banks, consulates and tender boards print the words "chartered accountant" in the checklist itself, and a certificate signed by anyone else is often returned before anyone reads the figure on it.
The signature holds where the acceptor has written "CA or CMA", which some tender formats and departmental schedules do, or has asked only for a certificate from a practising professional. It holds nowhere that the checklist prints "chartered accountant" on its own. That one line in the acceptor's paperwork decides the outcome far more often than either professional Act does, and reading it is the whole of the exercise.
The one test. Open the acceptor's own checklist, form or rule and find the line that names the signer. "Chartered accountant" alone means a CA signature. "CA or CMA", or "a practising professional", admits a cost accountant. Silence on the signer means asking in writing before anyone is paid.
- Keep itDo not discard it. The schedules, valuations and bank confirmations behind the figure are the costly part, and they usually survive intact.
- Ask in writingPut the question to the recipient: does your format admit a cost accountant's signature? A written answer settles it and protects you if the file is later queried.
- Redo only the attestationWhere the answer is no, a chartered accountant re-examines the same records and signs afresh. The figure is rebuilt from the evidence, not copied, but the evidence is already assembled.
What the Cost and Works Accountants Act lets a CMA certify
The Cost and Works Accountants Act 1959 defines a member in practice by the work offered, and the work it describes is cost work: the practice of cost and works accountancy, the costing or pricing of goods and services, and the preparation, verification or certification of cost accounting statements and the statements related to them. The wording is deliberate, and it puts the cost ledger in a cost accountant's hands.
That mandate is substantial. Cost audit under the Companies Act belongs to a cost accountant, not to a chartered accountant, and the cost records a company is required to keep rest on the same authority. Section 148 of the Companies Act 2013 provides for cost records and cost audit; the audit is conducted by a cost accountant appointed by the Board, the report is made in Form CRA-3, and the detail sits in the Companies (Cost Records and Audit) Rules, 2014. A cost accountant in practice signs the cost audit report and, in practice, certifies cost data in matters such as anti-dumping and subsidy proceedings and price justification for public sector buyers. None of that is contested, and none of it is a chartered accountant's work.
Where the Act stops is equally deliberate. Its certification clause reaches cost accounting statements, not financial ones. A net worth figure is drawn from a balance sheet, a title deed, a demat holding and a loan account, and none of those sits in a cost record. That is the whole reason the question in the title arises: the signature is lawful, but the document it is being asked to carry is drawn from a different set of books.
- Cost records a company is required to maintainand their audit, where cost audit applies
- The costing or pricing of goods and servicesunit cost, cost of production, cost of sales
- Cost statements certified for a buyer or a proceedingsuch as price justification or anti-dumping data
- The balance sheetassets and liabilities at a stated date
- Title deeds and valuationswhat the immovable property is and what it is worth
- Demat and bank statementsholdings and balances on the date certified
- Loan accounts and chargeswhat is owed, and what stands registered against each asset
The Institute of Cost Accountants has argued for a wider certification field for years, and in places a specific statute has named a cost accountant beside a chartered accountant. Those gains came from the naming statute, not from a widening of the cost accountants' own Act, which is why the test in the section above is the acceptor's wording and not the Act.
Where the Chartered Accountants Act gives CAs exclusive ground
Put the two definitions side by side and the split is one word. The Chartered Accountants Act 1949 defines practice around financial accounting statements; the Cost and Works Accountants Act 1959 defines it around cost accounting statements. Financial against cost is the whole of the statutory boundary, and a net worth statement sits on the financial side of it.
Exclusivity does not come from that clause alone. It comes from the statutes that then name the profession, and three of them matter to anyone asked for a net worth certificate.
- Income-tax Act 2025In force from 1 April 2026; income of the year 2025-26 is still assessed under the 1961 Act. Prescribed income-tax certificates travel with a chartered accountant's signature because of how the Act defines the accountant who may give them. Section 515(3)(b) of the Act defines an "accountant" as a chartered accountant who holds a valid certificate of practice under section 6(1) of the Chartered Accountants Act 1949.
- Companies Act 2013Under section 141 of the Companies Act 2013, only a chartered accountant, or a firm whose partners practising in India are mostly chartered accountants, may be appointed auditor of a company. A company's financial statements are audited by a chartered accountant, which is why a lender reading a company's net worth expects the same profession to certify it.
- RERA 2016The chartered accountant's statutory role under the real-estate law is certifying withdrawals from the project's designated account and the annual audit of project accounts. It is not a test of the promoter's own net worth, and a certificate offered for that purpose answers a question the Act does not ask.
Once the document is signed, the printed identifiers are what a verifier works with. Practising status, the certificate of practice that licenses a member to sign for clients at all, is the first thing checked, and a certificate signed without it carries no weight whichever institute issued the membership. The second is what a signature commits the signer to: a certificate is an attestation of a figure, with the responsibility that follows, not a copy signed for identification.
- Membership numberlooked up on the issuing institute's register; it says who signed and which profession they belong to
- Firm registration numberplaces the practice the signature is given for, personally or for and on behalf of the firm
- Certificate of practicethe licence to sign in practice; a membership without it is not a practising signature
- UDINthe document identification number the acceptor checks on the issuing institute's portal, explained below
What a company secretary can and cannot certify
The third profession is defined by a different verb altogether. The Company Secretaries Act 1980 describes practice in terms of company-law work: the promotion, incorporation, amalgamation and winding up of companies, and acting as an authorised representative in filing, registering, presenting, attesting or verifying a company's documents.
That covers a large body of certification. A company secretary in practice conducts the secretarial audit a larger company must have. The same member certifies the annual return of companies above the prescribed size. A long list of forms filed with the Registrar of Companies is pre-certified the same way.
A CS certificate says
- A filing has been made correctly and on time
- A resolution was passed, and the meeting that passed it was properly held
- A statutory register is in order
- The company has complied with the company-law provisions the audit covers
It does not say
- What an applicant, a promoter or a firm is worth
- What an asset is worth, or what stands charged against it
- That assets exceed liabilities by a stated sum on a stated date
- Anything a lender or a consulate reads as a financial opinion
None of it is a financial opinion. Where a filing carries a compliance question and a money question at once, two certificates travel together and two people sign them. The division is functional rather than hierarchical, and a company secretary's certificate offered in place of a net worth certificate is the wrong document rather than a weaker one.
Which acceptors insist on a CA: banks, embassies and tender boards
Three groups settle this in practice, and each of them does it in a different register. None of them is applying either professional Act; each is applying a document of its own.
Banks
Decides by internal credit policy
- Usually prints
- "Net worth certificate from a chartered accountant" in the credit-file checklist, without qualifying it further. That is contractual rather than statutory: a lender sets its own documentation policy, and it is under no duty to accept whichever professional the applicant chose.
- What to do
- Read the checklist before the certificate is commissioned. Arguing the point once the file is with the credit team rarely helps.
Consulates
Decides by the published document list
- Usually prints
- Where a visa checklist asks for professional attestation of funds, it typically names a chartered accountant. Missions take no view on Indian professional statutes; they follow their own list.
- What to do
- Match the list exactly. A signature outside it produces a returned document, not a debate, and the appointment date does not move while the file is re-done.
Tender boards and regulators
Decides by the printed form
- Usually prints
- The profession is fixed in the format before you see it, which makes this the least negotiable of the three. Where the form prints "CA or CMA", a cost accountant signs it without difficulty, and it is worth reading for before assuming either way. Under the real-estate law, the chartered accountant's role is the project account's withdrawals and annual audit, not the promoter's net worth.
- What to do
- File what the format names, to the sum and the date it names.
Where the line names a chartered accountant, what the acceptor is asking for is a net worth certificate signed by a CA: a figure drawn from the title deeds, statements and loan accounts described above, certified as at a date, addressed to the reader who asked for it, and carrying the identifiers that reader has been told to check. The records already assembled for a CMA-signed statement are the same records, which is why the re-examination is usually shorter than the first one.
If the checklist prints "chartered accountant"
Send us the checklist line and the records you already hold, and a CA tells you what the figure will rest on before any work starts.
Or call +91 945 945 6700, Monday to Saturday, 9 AM to 6 PM.
UDIN rules differ across ICAI, ICMAI and ICSI
Every certificate a practising chartered accountant signs carries a unique document identification number, and the number is the acceptor's check. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India phased the requirement in through 2019, starting with certificates, so a net worth certificate signed by a CA since then is expected to carry one.
- 1 February 2019UDIN on every certificate signed by a practising member
- 1 April 2019Extended to GST and tax audit reports
- 1 July 2019Extended to every remaining attest function
The other two institutes stand on their own footing, and that is the point of this section. Whatever identification system a cost accountant's or a company secretary's institute runs, it is that institute's system, with its own register and its own portal, and none of the three queries the other two.
This is where a wrong signature is usually caught, and it is caught by a clerk rather than by a lawyer.
- The verifier's instructionA bank officer or a mission clerk has been told to check the number on the ICAI portal.
- The number is enteredThe identification number printed on the face of the certificate goes into the ICAI lookup.
- Nothing comes backA number issued by another institute is not on the ICAI register, so the lookup returns no document.
- The file stopsThe certificate may be genuine and correctly signed by a member of a statutory body. It fails anyway, because the check being run is not the check that certificate answers.
Matching the printed details to the issuing institute's register is the step that exposes this in seconds, and it is worth running on your own certificate before the acceptor runs it on you.
Verdict: when a CMA certificate is enough and when it is not
One test settles the question, and it is not a reading of either Act. Look at what the acceptor has written down.
A CMA certificate is enough when
- The form prints "CA or CMA". Some tender formats and departmental schedules do, and a cost accountant then signs on solid ground.
- The request names a cost accountant, or asks only for a certificate from a practising professional, with no profession fixed.
- The document is cost work. Cost audit, cost records and cost statements are a cost accountant's own field, and a chartered accountant's signature there is the wrong one.
In those cases the signature is not a concession. It is the correct one, and the acceptor has said so in its own words.
It is not enough when
- The checklist prints "chartered accountant" on its own. The signature will not get through on technical merit, and the argument is lost before it starts.
- The verifier has been told to use the ICAI portal. A number from another institute returns nothing there, and the file stops at the first check.
- The acceptor's rule rests on a statute that names a CA, as the income-tax and company-audit provisions above do, so the profession was fixed before the form was printed.
Where the wider position has to be certified for a reader who has named a chartered accountant, the chartered accountant's certificate is the document, written to the sum and the date the request names.
- The cost audit report
- Certification of cost records
- Cost data for anti-dumping and subsidy proceedings
- Price justification for public procurement
Sending those to a chartered accountant is the same mistake running the other way.
If the wrong document is already in hand, the fix is usually smaller than it looks. The schedules and confirmations behind it stay usable, and only the certification is redone. Working out which document the recipient actually asked for is the step that matters, and the sentence that names the signer is where it starts. Where the question is what an asset is worth rather than what a position is, a valuer's report answers something else, and neither profession's net worth certificate stands in for it.