Somewhere in India right now, there's a bank account no one has touched in years, an insurance policy nobody remembers renewing, or a mutual fund investment sitting under a name the family no longer recognises. Multiply that across the country, and the number is striking: in FY2025-26, unclaimed financial assets in India crossed ₹1.1 lakh crore.
Government and regulatory recovery drives have already returned thousands of crores to rightful owners, but the pool keeps growing faster than it's being claimed.
But these figures represent more than dormant accounts. They may include forgotten bank savings, unclaimed dividends, mutual-fund payouts, insurance proceeds, shares transferred to investor-protection mechanisms and inoperative retirement savings.
So, how much money is actually unclaimed in India in 2026, where is it sitting, and how much is making its way back to its owners? Here's what the latest available data shows.
A. Unclaimed Bank Deposits
1. Banks transferred ₹86,917.08 crore to the RBI’s Depositor Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund as of 30 June 2026, making it the largest reported pool of unclaimed money. 2. SBI had the largest unclaimed deposits among other banks, accounting for ₹20,040.44 crore. Punjab National Bank had ₹7,585.32 crore, Canara Bank ₹6,830.09 crore, Bank of Baroda ₹5,848.34 crore and Union Bank ₹5,549.11 crore. 3. As of 1 March 2026, 18.86 lakh users had registered on RBI’s UDGAM portal to search for unclaimed bank deposits. UDGAM is a search facility, not a claim-settlement portal, so registration does not mean money has been recovered. 4. In April 2026, RBI reported average monthly payouts of ₹760 crore from October 2025 onwards, compared with ₹180 crore during April–September 2025. RBI attributed the improvement to the recovery campaign and incentives for banks.
B. Unclaimed Mutual Fund Money
5. As of 31 March 2026, mutual-fund unclaimed redemption amounts and dividends together stood at ₹3,811 crore, according to SEBI's FY2025–26 Annual Report. 6. Of the ₹3,811 crore, ₹2,689 crore was unclaimed dividends and ₹1,122 crore was unclaimed redemption amounts. SEBI reports that dividends rose 15.7% year-on-year while redemption amounts fell 0.5%.
C. Unclaimed Insurance Payouts
7. The government reported ₹8,973.89 crore in unclaimed insurance amounts outstanding with insurers as of 28 February 2026. 8. LIC reported ₹7,318.50 crore in unclaimed amounts as of 31 March 2026. Of this, ₹5,564.55 crore belonged to policyholders, while ₹1,753.95 crore represented income accrued on those unclaimed funds.
D. Unclaimed Shares and Dividends
9. IEPFA approved 75,417 claim applications over the preceding two years. Over the same period, IEPFA transferred 4.36 crore shares back to claimants. 10. Investors received ₹77.82 crore in dividend refunds. Even when the underlying investment exists, dividends can become unpaid or unclaimed separately. Recovering the shares and recovering associated cash are therefore not always the same process. 11. Details of nominees and family members entitled to inherit shares are kept by individual companies and are not connected to IEPFA’s claim portal. The time taken to return shares or dividends depends on the documents submitted and the company’s checks.
E. Inoperative EPF Account Balances
12. EPFO RTI report puts inoperative balances at approximately ₹9,330 crore in March 2026, down from ₹10,181 crore in March 2025. That is a decline of roughly 8.4%, calculated from the reported rounded amounts. 13. EPFO announced plans to return ₹5.68 crore across around 1.33 lakh inactive EPF accounts, each holding ₹1,000 or less. Eligible members would receive the money directly in their linked bank accounts without submitting a new claim or documents.
F. Money Already Recovered
14. The government’s recovery drive returned ₹5,777 crore across 22.95 lakh claims by 28 February 2026. By 30 June, the amount restored had risen to ₹7,320 crore.
Don’t Let Your Wealth Become a Statistic
The growing pool of unclaimed financial assets shows how easily money can be forgotten. Although regulators have helped return ₹7,320 crore to rightful owners, significant sums still remain unclaimed across bank deposits, mutual funds, insurance, shares and EPF accounts.
Finding forgotten money is possible. Preventing it from becoming unclaimed in the first place avoids the search altogether. The government's Common Landing Portal for Unclaimed Financial Assets, launched in May 2026, brings together search facilities for multiple financial assets in one place.
Beyond that, the recurring pattern behind most of these numbers is the same: outdated KYC and contact details, no consolidated record of investments and accounts, and nominee details that were set once and never reviewed.
Every number above tells the same story: money built carefully enough, but never reaching the people it was meant for. That's not a wealth problem. It's a legacy continuity problem.
1FCode fits in here: one place to see your accounts, investments, and nominee details together, so they're less likely to be the reason your family ends up on a list like this.
Note: Different reports use different scopes and cut-off dates, so headline totals can vary; this piece compiles figures from RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, EPFO and Parliament records, each cited at the point it's used.
