What are unclaimed deposits?
A deposit is considered to be unclaimed if there has been no activity on it for ten years or longer, such as a deposit of funds or a withdrawal from the depositor.Unclaimed deposits are not just small amounts of money lying in savings bank accounts people stop operating and then forget about them. The unclaimed money is lying across various financial sector segments such as banking deposits, shares and dividends, mutual funds and insurance. People open new accounts when they change jobs or relocate and then stop using the previous accounts and then forget about them. Then, there are people who had fixed deposits or other investments but didn’t tell their families about them and died.
After 10 years, such money becomes unclaimed and is transferred to the RBIs Depositors Education and Awareness Fund. Thirty five thousand crore rupees is the amount of deposits lying unclaimed for 10 years. Every year more such money adds to unclaimed deposits.
State Bank of India leads the ranking with Rs 8,086 crore in unclaimed deposits, followed by Punjab National Bank (Rs 5,340 crore), Canara Bank (Rs 4,558 crore), and Bank of Baroda (Rs 3,904 crore).
What about unclaimed dividends and shares?
There is a portal run by the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF) Authority, which runs this unclaimed securities and unclaimed dividend amounts. Harsh Roongta, Founder, Fee Only Investment Advisers LLP, told ET last month this amount could be as high as Rs 50,000 crore. “Even if you manage to find out that you have certain unclaimed shares, it is difficult to get access to those shares… The good news is, I think it is changing. The IEPF Authority has come out with a consultation paper on how to ease the process very clearly. As per our understanding, the securities regulator is also working on these aspects,” Roongta said.
What are the authorities doing about it?
Early last month, the Supreme Court asked the Ministry of Finance to respond to a PIL seeking a mechanism to inform the legal heirs of deceased depositors about the unclaimed deposits lying dormant in bank accounts.
The PIL has sought directions to the Centre and others to ensure that unclaimed deposits of the public that get transferred to government owned funds be given to the legal heirs of the depositors. It said a mechanism needed to be evolved to inform the legal heirs about the unclaimed deposits lying in dormant bank accounts.
The RBI has announced the development of a new centralised web portal to search for unclaimed deposits that are older than 10 years. At present, bank customers have to go through websites of multiple banks to claim these deposits. This new web portal will help bank customers to find their unclaimed deposit at a single point.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman yesterday asked the regulators to initiate a special drive to settle unclaimed deposits in banks and financial institutions.