The Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA), under the corporate affairs ministry, is also planning to ease the process for investors to get the unclaimed shares and dividends, the official told ET, adding that this will curtail the requirement of certain superfluous documentations.
Shares, dividends and matured debentures that are not claimed for seven years are transferred by companies to the IEPFA. According to the official data, the unclaimed amount available with the IEPFA at the end of March 2022 was Rs 5,262 crore, up 9% from a year before. The number has since increased.
Currently, about two dozen documents are required for the refunds, which are scrutinised multiple times at different levels. This inordinately delays the process and the settlement often takes more than a year, against the targeted 60 days.
To expedite the settlement, the integrated portal was announced by finance and corporate affairs minister Nirmala Sitharaman in the budget for this financial year. Through the proposed portal, investors can quickly check if their shares or dividends are lying with the IEPFA.
The submission of the claim forms and e-verification, among others, can be done online, said the official. There could also be a dashboard of information for investors.
The extant system involves a certain amount of manual intervention for the settlement, which not just delays the process but can potentially lead to malpractice, something that the ministry wants to plug.
Presenting the budget, Sitharaman had said, “In order to boost investor protection and further solidify the financial sector and allow investors to reclaim unclaimed shares and unpaid dividends from the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority with ease, an integrated IT portal is proposed to be established.”