The revised instructions apply to all commercial banks (including regional rural banks) and all cooperative banks and come into effect from April 1, 2024 | Representative image
Unclaimed deposits in banks have witnessed a year-on-year increase of 26 per cent to Rs 78,213 crore at the end of March 2024, the RBI annual report released on Thursday showed.
The amount in the Depositor Education and Awareness Fund stood at Rs 62,225 crore at the end of March 2023.
Banks, including co-operative banks, transfer unclaimed deposits of account holders remaining in their accounts for ten years or more to RBI’s Depositor Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund.
As a measure to assist the account holders and with a view to consolidating and rationalizing the existing instructions on inactive accounts, the Reserve Bank earlier this year issued comprehensive guidelines on the steps to be taken by the banks covering various aspects of classifying cover accounts. and deposits as non-operating accounts and unclaimed deposits, as the case may be.
The RBI advised banks for periodic audit of such accounts, measures to prevent fraud in such accounts, grievance mechanism for expeditious redressal of complaints, steps to be taken to clear customers of non-functioning accounts or unclaimed deposits traces, including their nominees or legal heirs for reactivation of accounts, settlement of claims or closure and the process to be followed.
It was expected that these instructions would complement the ongoing efforts and initiatives of the banks and the Reserve Bank to reduce the number of unclaimed deposits in the banking system and return such deposits to their rightful owners/claimants.
The revised instructions apply to all commercial banks (including regional rural banks) and all cooperative banks and come into effect from April 1, 2024.
To enable the depositors to search the unclaimed deposits of multiple banks easily and at one place, the Reserve Bank has developed a centralized web portal, UDGAM – Unclaimed Deposits Gateway to Access information.
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First print: May 30, 2024 | 1:37 PM IST