Prime minister (PM) Narendra Modi has called on citizens across the country to check for unclaimed financial assets and reclaim what is rightfully theirs under the nationwide ‘Your Money, Your Right’ initiative, launched in October 2025 to address the massive pool of unclaimed deposits lying across financial institutions.
In a detailed
post shared on LinkedIn on Wednesday, the prime minister highlighted what he described as ‘startling facts’ about dormant funds scattered across banks, insurance companies, mutual funds and corporate dividend accounts.
Calling the effort a major step towards financial transparency and empowerment, PM Modi says this is an opportunity for people to ‘convert a forgotten financial asset into a new opportunity’. “Your money is yours. Let us make sure that it finds its way back to you. Together, let us build a transparent, financially empowered and inclusive India,” he added.
“Indian banks are holding ₹78,000 crore of unclaimed money belonging to our own citizens. Insurance companies have nearly ₹14,000 crore in unclaimed funds. Mutual fund companies have around ₹3,000 crore, and dividends worth ₹9,000 crore are also unclaimed,” he wrote.
PM Modi noted that these figures have surprised many, as they represent the hard-earned savings and investments of countless families that, for various reasons ranging from incomplete documentation to oversight, have remained unrecovered for years.
To address the issue, the government and financial regulators have created dedicated portals to make it easier for people to identify and claim funds:
The PM says the government has made a concerted effort to take this initiative to the grassroots. “As of December 2025, facilitation camps have been organised in 477 districts across rural and urban India. The emphasis has been to cover remote areas,” he says.
Through coordinated efforts of the government, regulators, banks and other financial institutions, nearly ₹2,000 crore has already been returned to the rightful owners.
PM Modi added that the mission will be further scaled up in the coming days and urged citizens to actively participate. “Check whether you or your family have unclaimed deposits, insurance proceeds, dividends or investments. Visit the portals I have mentioned. Make use of facilitation camps in your district,” he appealed.
Indian banks have returned ₹10,297 crore to rightful owners or depositors in forgotten or inactive deposits over the past three years, according to a written reply in the Rajya Sabha last week by Pankaj Chaudhary, the minister of state for finance. The refunds span public and private sector banks and cover more than 3.3mn (million) dormant accounts settled between April 2022 and November 2025.
The minister says the results were part of an intensified national effort to trace account holders or their legal heirs and restore old, unclaimed balances earlier transferred to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s depositor education and awareness (DEA) Fund. Under RBI rules, balances in savings, current and term deposit accounts that remain untouched for ten years must be transferred to the DEA Fund, from which customers can later claim their dues.
Public sector banks (PSBs) have led the recovery effort, settling over 2.2mn accounts and returning around ₹8,460 crore to customers or their heirs. State Bank of India (SBI) alone accounted for ₹3,868 crore repaid across more than 1.6mn accounts, making it the single largest contributor. Central Bank of India followed with over ₹1,262 crore, while Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, Union Bank of India and Bank of Baroda all returned hundreds of crores through verified claims.
Last month, M Nagaraju, secretary of department of financial services (DFS) under the Union ministry of finance (MoF) said that the ministry is collaborating with RBI to create a comprehensive digital platform that will consolidate all types of dormant financial holdings, including bank deposits, insurance claims, mutual fund investments, shares and dividend payments. (Read:
Moneylife Impact: Government To Launch Unified Portal for Unclaimed Financial Assets)
The new consolidated platform will serve as a one-stop solution coordinated by RBI, bringing together information from all financial sector regulators into a single searchable interface, he says.
Recent statistics reveal that about ₹1.08 lakh crore in unclaimed funds are sitting idle across banks, mutual funds, insurance providers and unpaid dividend accounts. The fragmented nature of existing systems—where customers must navigate different platforms depending on whether their assets fall under banking, insurance, or securities regulations—often discourages people from pursuing their rightful claims.
This litigation and years of sustained advocacy pushed RBI to launch the UDGAM (unclaimed deposits-gateway to access information) portal. Through its report,
Challenges in Transmission of Assets to Nominees and Legal Heirs, Moneylife Foundation has consistently highlighted how banks routinely flout RBI’s own rules by failing to publish lists of unclaimed accounts, demanding excessive documentation and delaying even legitimate claims. These obstacles disproportionately affect senior citizens and legal heirs, leaving families struggling to recover funds that are rightfully theirs.
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