One Portal Now Traces All Your Unclaimed Money

Last reviewed: 3 September 2026.

Until now, a family hunting for a forgotten fixed deposit, an old policy that matured quietly, or a share certificate found in a steel almirah had to guess which website to try first. There is a separate system for each kind of asset and no obvious front door. That changed in May 2026.

Your money did not go into one government vault. Each kind of asset stays inside its own system, with its own custodian and claim process. The new portal is the map, not the vault.

Two of these four routes have a destination most readers have heard of. The other two do not, which is exactly why a single starting point matters.

The release calls it a unified platform providing access to search facilities. That phrase is doing a lot of work.

What it is. A single official starting address where the asset families named in the release sit side by side, so a citizen who does not know a registrar from a fund house can still begin. It is the visible front of a wider campaign, Aapki Poonji, Aapka Adhikar, meaning Your Money, Your Right, which DFS runs with the regulators, banks and other stakeholders to help trace and return unclaimed financial assets. The release frames it as advancing accessibility, transparency and a citizen centric financial ecosystem, and links it to Viksit Bharat 2047.

What it is not. It is not an account you can log into and withdraw from, and it does not settle your claim. The search and the claim still happen inside the asset class system it sends you to, under its own rules and document list.

Why that saves you time. People give up at the handover point: they land on a different site with a different login and assume something has gone wrong. Nothing has. The handover is the design. For current screens and categories, check the portal itself.

A search that returns nothing is often a search fed the wrong spelling. Before you begin, put these next to you.

• The exact name as written in the record, not the name used today: the spelling on the old passbook, policy or share certificate, with initials.
• Date of birth, and where asked, the PAN or Aadhaar of the person whose asset you are tracing.
• The address given to the bank or insurer at the time. Old records match against old addresses.
• Any account, policy, folio or client number, even a partial one on a torn document.
• The branch, the town, and the bank as it was then. Banks have merged, so a deposit in a bank that no longer exists is held by whichever bank absorbed it.
• If the holder has died: the death certificate, the heirship or succession document your state issues, and your identity proof showing the relationship.

Try the name with and without a middle name, and try the maiden surname. In old records, one clerk's spelling decides whether you find the money.

A parent has died, somewhere there is a deposit or a policy or shares bought in the 1990s, and no paperwork is left. Work in this order.

One. Reconstruct the identity, not the asset. You will not find the account number, but you can usually reconstruct the exact name, date of birth and old address. That is what the searches match on.

Two. Take each asset family in turn from the landing portal. Bank deposits first, then insurance, then shares and dividends, then mutual funds. Log what you searched, with which spelling, and what came back.

Three. A search result is not a payout. A hit tells you where to file. The claim goes to the custodian: the bank branch, the insurer, the registrar, or the IEPF route.

Four. Document your standing early. Nearly every refusal a legal heir meets is about proof of relationship, not about the money. Get the death and heirship certificates before you write letters.

An online search shows only what has been uploaded, indexed and matched. A record never digitised, or digitised with a misspelt name, will not appear on any screen. That silence is not proof the money does not exist.

This is where the Right to Information Act, 2005 becomes the strongest tool an ordinary family has. Public sector banks and the IEPF Authority are public authorities. You can require a written, signed answer on their letterhead, with a time limit and an appeal if they ignore you. Three points make such an RTI work.

Ask about a record, not for an opinion. Do not ask whether you are entitled to the money. Ask whether any account or deposit stands or stood in a named person's name at a named branch, whether it was transferred onward, and what a legal heir must file.

Deal with the third party problem up front. A Public Information Officer can refuse personal information about somebody else, and a request that reads like a stranger fishing for another person's bank details will be refused, correctly. So say in the first line that you are the account holder, or the legal heir, and attach proof. That paragraph is the difference between an answer and a refusal.

Use the routing sections of the Act. Section 6(1) is your right to ask. Section 6(3) forces the office to pass your application on when the record sits elsewhere, instead of rejecting it. Section 7(1) sets the reply deadline. Section 19(1) is your first appeal. Our walkthrough is how to file an RTI in India.

Replace every [square bracket] with your own detail. Address it to the Public Information Officer of the specific public sector bank, or of the IEPF Authority.

To,
The Public Information Officer
[Name of the public sector bank / the IEPF Authority]
[Full postal address of that office]

Subject: Request for information under section 6(1) of the Right to
Information Act, 2005

Sir / Madam,

I am [your full name], resident of [your address]. My standing is:
[I am the account holder myself] / [I am the legal heir of the late
[name of the deceased], who was my [relationship]]. I enclose self
attested copies of [my photo identity document], [the death
certificate] and [the legal heir or succession document issued to
me]. I am therefore not seeking the personal information of an
unconnected third party.

Please provide the following:

1. Whether any account, deposit or locker stands, or at any time
   stood, in the name of [full name as recorded], date of birth
   [date], resident of [address as recorded with you], at your
   [branch name] branch, and if so its type and present status.

2. Whether any such balance has been classified as unclaimed or
   inoperative and transferred to the DEA Fund, with the date and
   reference of that transfer.

3. Where shares or dividends are concerned, whether any holding in
   the above name has been transferred to the Investor Education and
   Protection Fund, with the date and reference of that transfer.

4. The complete procedure and full list of documents a legal heir
   must submit to claim such an amount, with a copy of the circular
   or standard operating procedure your office applies, and the
   designation of the officer who decides such claims.

If any part of this information is held by another branch, office or
public authority, please transfer that part under section 6(3) of the
Act and inform me in writing.

I request the information within the period fixed by section 7(1). If
no reply is received in that period, I will treat it as a deemed
refusal and file a first appeal under section 19(1).

I enclose the prescribed application fee by [mode of payment].

Place: [city]        Date: [date]

Yours faithfully,
[Your full name]
[Full postal address]
[Mobile number]

The AI RTI Drafter will assemble this from your answers, and the RTI timeline calculator tracks your deadlines.

• Searching only the name you know today. The record holds the old spelling, the old initials, the maiden name.
• Assuming one portal pays out. The landing portal routes, the custodian pays. Expect the handover and follow it.
• Treating an empty result as final. Undigitised and misspelt records do not appear. That is a reason to write, not to stop.
• Filing an RTI without proving who you are. A request that looks like it is about a stranger's account will be refused as third party personal information, correctly.
• Asking a question instead of asking for a record. “Am I entitled to this money” invites a brush off. “Does any deposit stand in this name at this branch” demands an answer.
• Paying an agent who promises recovery. Nobody needs a cut of your own money to find it.
• Letting the deadline pass. Silence is a deemed refusal, and the first appeal under section 19(1) usually produces the answer.

No. Per the official release it is a unified platform providing access to search facilities for unclaimed bank deposits, insurance claims, shares, dividends and mutual funds. The money stays with the custodian, and the claim is settled there.

Yes. Unclaimed bank deposits are searched through the RBI UDGAM system, and the landing portal is how you reach it from one official address. See our UDGAM unclaimed deposits guide.

They stay with the company and its registrar, and where transferred to the government they sit with the Investor Education and Protection Fund and are recovered through the IEPF claim process.

You can do both, and file an RTI as well. What changes is the proof: as a legal heir you must show the death certificate, the heirship or succession document and your identity proof.

File an RTI with the relevant public sector bank or the IEPF Authority under section 6(1), using the sample letter above. A written reply beats a search that depends on how a name was typed decades ago.

It can, if your application reads like a stranger asking about somebody else's account. That is why the letter must open by stating that you are the account holder or the legal heir, and must enclose proof of that.

Treat the silence as a deemed refusal once the period under section 7(1) has run out, and file a first appeal under section 19(1) with the First Appellate Authority of that bank.

No. The official route begins at the government landing portal and runs through the custodian's own claim process. Take any charge or document requirement from the portal itself.

• Press Information Bureau, Ministry of Finance, Release ID 2266714: DFS launches the Common Landing Portal for Unclaimed Financial Assets - the 29 May 2026 launch by Shri M. Nagaraju, Secretary, DFS, the PSB Alliance development, and the Aapki Poonji, Aapka Adhikar campaign.
• The portal: https://www.unclaimedassetsportal.in - verified live on 3 September 2026.
• The Right to Information Act, 2005 - sections 6(1), 6(3), 7(1) and 19(1).

• UDGAM unclaimed bank deposit search
• Claim IEPF shares and dividends through Form IEPF-5
• Dormant bank account balance not traceable
• Unclaimed shares recovery guide
• How to file an RTI in India
• The RTI Act, 2005
• AI RTI Drafter
• RTI timeline calculator
• The RTI Playbook