India’s Unclaimed Assets Reveal a Trillion-Rupee Crisis Demanding Reform

The shock of financial loss does not come from markets alone. It often comes from the administrative void that follows death. Two recent experiences illustrate this with painful clarity. One involves a family that watched well-planned savings turn to dust because records were scattered, nominations missing, and claims trapped in archaic processes. The other concerns a worker’s widow who inherited modest security simply because her husband’s nominations were in order. Together, they reveal an uncomfortable truth: in India, financial planning is not merely about creating assets, but about ensuring they can be retrieved. And that is where the real failure lies.

The government’s decision to launch a unified portal for all unclaimed assets across bank deposits, pensions, shares, and dividends is therefore both necessary and overdue. It marks an acknowledgement that India’s fragmented systems have made it absurdly hard for rightful heirs to claim what already belongs to them.

Invisible Wealth 
The sheer magnitude of unclaimed wealth is staggering. As of mid-2025, public sector banks alone held more than ₹580 billion in unclaimed deposits, with private banks adding nearly ₹90 billion. Another ₹840 billion in shares and dividends sits with the Investor Education and Protection Fund. Unclaimed insurance proceeds likely add another ₹120–200 billion. Together, India is sitting on nearly ₹2 trillion that neither circulates, nor earns, nor reaches those who need it.

Regulators have begun to act. The Ministry of Corporate Affairs has proposed a dedicated portal for unclaimed shares, integrating corporate filings with depository data. A new CEO for the IEPF signals overdue seriousness. The Reserve Bank of India directed banks to return roughly ₹670 billion of unclaimed deposits in a compressed three-month window of October-December 2025. Each initiative is valuable, but none resolves the fundamental problem: institutional silos allow assets to become invisible.

This is why the Financial Services Secretary’s announcement of a unified, cross-sector portal matters. But if this effort is to succeed on a national scale, it must fix the structural gaps that created the problem in the first place.

The most urgent reform is a centralised nomination registry. Today, nomination data, if it exists at all, sits in a thousand different databases: banks, insurers, mutual funds, provident funds, corporates, and depositories. When savers die, heirs are left to guess where the money is held, let alone whether the nomination was ever filed or updated.

Nearly half of all bank accounts in India still have no registered nominee, which means millions of households are exposed to avoidable disputes and delays. An integrated view of nomination status across bank and financial accounts on DigiLocker would, for the first time, allow citizens to see clearly where nominations exist and where they are missing.

A unified registry, linked mandatorily to every account and financial instrument, would end this chaos. It would allow families to retrieve a complete nomination map instantly. And it would give institutions a single source of truth, sharply reducing disputes, delays and the widespread informal “brokerage” that has grown around claims.

The unified portal must also be fully integrated with India Stack and DigiLocker. These platforms already provide a national KYC backbone and secure digital document vault; both can anchor a transparent, simplified claims process. 

SEBI’s recent step of allowing nominees read-only access to a deceased person’s financial documents via DigiLocker is an important start. But this facility needs to be universal. DigiLocker should store nomination details across all asset classes. India Stack should ensure that KYC authentication and updates flow seamlessly. And the unified portal should serve as a single dashboard, showing precisely what exists, where it exists and who is entitled to it.

This combination would turn a maze of institutional paperwork into an accessible, auditable, nationwide system. For claimants, it would convert months, or even years, of bureaucratic pursuit into a matter of days. For financial institutions, it would mean cleaner books, fewer lingering liabilities, and far less time lost to avoidable paperwork. It would also nudge regulators such as the RBI, IRDAI, SEBI and the MCA to publish regular, consolidated updates on unclaimed assets.

However, even the best technology cannot fix what families do not disclose. A peculiar secrecy persists in Indian households, where individuals often keep financial details private, even from spouses and children. When combined with low awareness of nominations, this secrecy ensures that assets easily outlive their owners.

The solution requires a cultural shift. Financial literacy drives have long centred on saving and investing, but they must now also help people plan for the inevitabilities of life. That means sharing essential information with at least one trusted person, making a will, or at the very least keeping a simple record of assets in a place that can be found. Our hesitation to have these conversations is quietly costing families real money. A national campaign—much like the ones that helped embed UPI or expand insurance—would go a long way towards changing this mindset. The message must be simple: an asset unclaimed is an asset lost.

Also Read: India’s Tax System Finally Learns the Meaning of Proportion

Inclusive System
India’s unclaimed assets problem is not merely an administrative issue; it reflects the deeper architecture of our financial system. Fragmentation has created opacity. Faulty nominations have created disputes.

The proposed unified portal—if built with rigorous integration, mandatory nomination linkage, and transparent reporting—can change this. It can return wealth to the people it was meant for, reduce dormant capital, and reinforce trust in the system. It can also help build a more inclusive financial architecture in which planning for succession is not an afterthought but a fundamental right.

The shift from scattered holdings to a centralised, nomination-led ecosystem is the country’s best chance to unlock nearly ₹2 trillion in dormant wealth. It will take coordination, attention to detail and a willingness to rethink legacy processes. But the reward is clear: a financial system that honours the intentions of its savers, protects the vulnerable, and strengthens economic participation.