Bonus, Dividend or Rights Not Credited to Your Demat? Here Is the Fix

Reviewed on: 2026-06-12.

A corporate action is a company event that changes your holding: a bonus issue, a stock split, a dividend, a rights entitlement, a merger swap or a buyback. When the company declares one, you are entitled if your name appears in the records on the record date. If the credit has not reached your demat account or bank, do these four things first, in order, before you wait any longer.

1. Pull your Consolidated Account Statement (CAS). Download it from the CDSL or NSDL portal and confirm you actually held the shares on the record date. If you bought just before the ex-date, the trade may not have settled in time and you were never entitled.
2. Identify the Registrar and Transfer Agent (RTA). Bonus, dividend and rights credits are processed by the company's RTA, usually KFin Technologies or Computershare (Cameo, Link Intime and others also operate). The RTA name is on the company's investor page and on the corporate-action notice filed with the exchange.
3. Check the corporate-action timeline. Each action has a stated credit or payment date in the company's exchange filing. A dividend usually reaches your registered bank within about 30 days of declaration. Bonus and split credits hit your demat around the execution date set by the depository. Do not chase before that date passes.
4. Confirm your bank and demat details are clean. A dividend fails when the bank account mapped to your folio is closed, dormant or has a wrong IFSC. A demat credit fails when the depository has an old or frozen account on record.

Once you know you were entitled and the credit date has passed, the matter becomes a grievance you escalate with paper.

The cause is almost always one of these. Match yours before you write to anyone.

• You were not on the record date register. The most common reason. Shares bought on or after the ex-date do not carry the entitlement. The seller who held on the record date gets it.
• Old physical shares not dematerialised. A dividend on physical certificates is paid to the address on the folio, often by a warrant that is returned undelivered. Bonus on physical holding may be issued in physical form and held in an unclaimed suspense account.
• Bank mandate stale. The dividend was processed but the electronic credit bounced. After repeated failures the company moves the amount to the Unpaid or Unclaimed Dividend Account, and after seven years to the IEPF.
• Demat account closed or shifted. You closed or transferred the demat account between the record date and the execution date, and the credit went to the old one.
• Rights entitlement (RE) lapsed. A rights issue credits temporary RE shares to your demat. If you neither applied nor sold them in the rights trading window, they lapsed and you got nothing.

Anjali in Pune held 200 shares of a listed company on the record date for a 1:1 bonus. She expected 200 more shares. Two weeks after the bonus execution date her CAS still showed only 200. She checked and found she had transferred her holding from one broker to another a week before the record date, and the closure of the old demat account was still in process on the record date. The bonus credited to the old account. She wrote to the old broker's DP and the RTA with both BO IDs and the transfer date, and the 200 bonus shares were traced and moved. Lesson: a corporate action follows the account that held the shares on the record date, not the account you hold today.

1. RTA or your DP first. For a dividend or a credit on shares held with an RTA folio, write to the RTA. For a credit that should hit your demat, write to your Depository Participant (your broker or bank). State the company, ISIN, record date, the action declared, the quantity due, your folio or BO ID, and the bank account for dividends. Attach the CAS extract and the exchange notice. Ask for a written reason and a credit date.
2. The depository. If the DP does not act, escalate to CDSL or NSDL through their investor grievance portal. They can examine the account-level record.
3. SEBI SCORES. If the RTA, DP or depository does not resolve it, file on SEBI SCORES against the registered intermediary or the company. The entity must file an Action Taken Report, usually within 21 calendar days. If the reply does not satisfy you, you can seek a review.
4. IEPF, if seven years passed. If an unpaid dividend or the matching shares moved to the Investor Education and Protection Fund, you reclaim them by filing Form IEPF-5 on the IEPF portal, with verification by the company's nodal officer.

To: The Investor Relations / Registrar and Transfer Agent
[RTA name and address]

Subject: Non-credit of [bonus / dividend / rights] - [Company], ISIN [code]

I held [quantity] shares of [Company] (ISIN [code]) on the record
date [date] for the [action] declared on [date]. As per the company
filing, the [credit / payment] was due on or before [date].

Folio / BO ID: [number]
Demat: [DP name, BO ID] / Bank for dividend: [bank, masked account]

The entitlement of [quantity shares / Rs amount] has not been
credited. My CAS dated [date] is attached, along with the exchange
notice. Please credit the entitlement and confirm the date, or give
me the specific reason in writing if you consider me not entitled.
[Name, PAN, mobile, date]

SEBI is a public authority, so an RTI to SEBI can ask whether it has taken any action on the company or intermediary, subject to exemptions. The company, its RTA, your broker and the depositories (CDSL, NSDL) are private bodies and are outside RTI; use SCORES and their grievance cells instead. One genuine exception: if the shares are of a public sector undertaking, an RTI to that PSU's PIO may obtain corporate-action records. Read why RTI gets rejected before drafting.

You must hold on the record date, and a buy settles a day later under the T+1 cycle. A purchase on or just before the ex-date may not place you on the register. Check the ex-date and record date in the company filing against your contract note.

The electronic credit likely bounced on a stale or closed account. Update your bank mandate with the RTA, then ask the RTA to re-process. If years have passed, the amount may sit in the unpaid dividend account or have moved to the IEPF for an IEPF-5 claim.

Those were temporary Rights Entitlement (RE) shares. If you did not apply for the rights issue or sell the RE in the trading window, the entitlement lapsed. There is no credit to recover.

In a merger or scheme of arrangement, new shares are issued in a swap ratio by the RTA after the scheme is effective. Write to the RTA with your old holding details and ISIN. Credits can take weeks after the effective date.

A company must usually pay a declared dividend within about 30 days of declaration. Wait for that window, then raise it with the RTA before going to SCORES.

SCORES routes your complaint to the company or intermediary and tracks the Action Taken Report. It is a strong grievance route, not a court. For a binding outcome on a securities dispute with an intermediary, the Smart ODR platform offers conciliation and arbitration.

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Download the corporate action credit checklist (PDF).