The Supreme Court of India on Monday (October 6, 2025) issued notices to the Union Government and several financial regulators on a public interest petition seeking the creation of an integrated digital platform that would allow citizens to access information about all their financial holdings, whether operational, inactive, or unclaimed, across entities regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), and the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI).
A Bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta sought responses from the Union of India, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, the RBI, SEBI, IRDAI, the National Savings Institute, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), and the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA).
The petition, filed by social activist Aakash Goel, sought the creation of a centralised system to help individuals trace and recover their dispersed or inactive financial assets. It contended that funds lying in dormant bank accounts, unclaimed dividends, matured insurance policies, unpaid provident fund balances, and unredeemed mutual fund units remain fragmented across various financial institutions, with no unified platform to track or reclaim them.
Senior advocate Mukta Gupta, appearing for the petitioner, submitted that although the Delhi High Court had earlier acknowledged the seriousness of the issue, the authorities had failed to act on the petitioner’s representation.“The High Court had acknowledged the gravity of the problem but left it to the authorities to consider a policy. However, nothing has moved since then. The funds of millions of ordinary citizens remain trapped across banks and insurance companies,” Ms. Gupta said.
While issuing notice, the Supreme Court directed the Centre and financial regulators to file their responses within four weeks, and listed the case for further hearing thereafter.
Earlier, in January, a Division Bench of the Delhi High Court had acknowledged that the issue of dormant and unclaimed financial assets was “a serious concern affecting millions of depositors and investors”. However, it declined to intervene judicially, observing that the matter required executive and policy-level consideration.
‘Trapped wealth’
The petition pointed out that over 9.22 crore bank accounts across the country remain inoperative, each with an average balance of ₹3,918. It further stated that unclaimed financial assets worth more than ₹3.5 lakh crore lie idle across banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, provident funds, and small savings schemes.
“The said unclaimed financial assets have been accumulated primarily due to the absence of a centralised portal made available at one place across the regulated entities under the respondents (authorities) which would allow individuals or their respective nominees after filing in KYC (Know Your Customer) details to access all the requisite details pertaining to their respective financial assets such as bank deposits, shares and dividends, insurance and pension funds, amongst others,” the plea stated.
The petitioner further noted that many of these funds belonged to individuals who had passed away, leaving their legal heirs unaware of their existence due to missing nominee details or the lack of a unified system to trace them. This, the plea argued, had resulted in a vast pool of “trapped wealth” that remained beyond the reach of rightful beneficiaries, and contributed little to the nation’s economy.
“It is submitted that the right to property under Article 300A and the right to information under Article 19(1)(a), read with the right to dignity and welfare under Article 21, mandate that the state must actively facilitate access to and return of such unclaimed assets to legitimate owners,” the plea further stated.
The petition called for the development of a secure, Aadhaar-linked, e-KYC-enabled platform that would bring together details of all financial assets held by individuals and their nominees under various regulatory bodies. It further sought directions for financial institutions to make it mandatory to record nominee information for every account or investment, and to create a structured, time-bound mechanism to address claims and grievances efficiently.
Published – October 06, 2025 04:32 pm IST
