People spend years carefully building wealth through fixed deposits, mutual funds, insurance policies and shares. But life has a way of getting in the way. Investors move cities, change banks, forget old investments or simply lose track of paperwork. Sometimes, the original investor passes away without telling family members about every financial asset they owned.
Over time, these forgotten investments can become "unclaimed".
Many people assume that once money is transferred to government-managed funds, it is gone forever. Fortunately, that is not the case.
What is the Government's Unclaimed Assets Portal?
“The Unclaimed Assets Portal addresses a longstanding pain point by providing a single entry point to search across multiple categories of unclaimed financial assets,” says Adhil Shetty, CEO of BankBazaar.
It currently allows users to search for unclaimed bank deposits, insurance claims, shares and dividends, and mutual fund investments through the respective regulators and financial institutions.
However, investors should not mistake the portal for a claim settlement system, cautions Shetty.
"It is a search and access platform, not a claims settlement mechanism. It neither verifies ownership nor processes claims," he says.
