The RBI Is Paying Banks to Return Unclaimed Money. The Scheme Ends This September.

Something genuinely unusual is happening in Indian banking, and it has a deadline.

More than Rs 72,000 crore of ordinary families’ money sits in the RBI’s unclaimed deposits fund. For decades, the incentives around it pointed the wrong way: returning an unclaimed deposit was work a branch did reluctantly, for a customer who might never come back.

In October 2025, the RBI flipped the incentive. Under its Scheme for Facilitating Accelerated Payout of Inoperative Accounts and Unclaimed Deposits, banks now earn a payment for every unclaimed deposit they successfully return: 5 percent of the amount (up to Rs 5,000) for accounts dormant a few years, rising to 7.5 percent (up to Rs 25,000) for deposits lying unclaimed for more than a decade.

The scheme runs until 30 September 2026. For this one window, the bank across the counter is not doing you a favour by processing your claim. You are doing them one.

Free tool. Answer five questions and get a personalised claim plan with the letters written for you: open the Recovery Navigator.

What this means in practice

• Branches are motivated. Claims that used to drift now move; banks have internal targets to shrink their unclaimed books, and the government has been reviewing progress publicly.
• The ecosystem is warmed up. The “Your Money, Your Right” campaign ran camps in 748 districts through late 2025, branch staff have processed more of these claims in the past year than in the previous several, and the paperwork paths are well-trodden.
• The search has never been easier. The RBI’s UDGAM portal now covers 30 banks holding roughly 90 percent of all unclaimed deposits, and it has already served millions of searches.

To be honest about the deadline: your money does not vanish on 1 October 2026. Unclaimed deposits remain claimable forever, with interest continuing to accrue on savings balances. What ends in September is the season when banks are paid to make it easy. File in the window, and the friction is at its lowest.

The 15-minute search

1. Go to udgam.rbi.org.in, register with your mobile number, and search the names of every elder in your family, with spelling variations.
2. Note the UDRN reference for anything found, along with the bank and branch.
3. Take it to the bank with KYC documents, and the death certificate and heir documents where the account holder has passed away.

Our step-by-step UDGAM guide covers every screen, every document, and the letters to carry, including the RBI’s 2025 rules that mean nominees never need court documents, and most families never need a succession certificate at all.

Who should search, even if you think there is nothing

• Anyone whose parents or grandparents banked before everything went digital. Old salary accounts, closed-branch deposits and forgotten FDs are exactly what the fund is made of.
• Families that moved cities at any point; dormant accounts trail behind relocations.
• Anyone who has ever thought “I think there was an account with…” and let the sentence trail off. That sentence is usually worth 15 minutes.

The checklist to save

• Search every elder’s name on UDGAM this week; it is free and takes minutes.
• Repeat with spelling variations and the family’s previous cities in mind.
• Note UDRNs, gather KYC and certificates, and file at the branch.
• Quote the accelerated payout scheme if a claim drags; branches know it.
• Never pay anyone to “release” a deposit; the process is free, and this year it is fast.
• After the claims: add nominees everywhere, so your family never appears in these statistics.

That last step matters more than the rest. Money becomes unclaimed when information dies with a person. Parampara is the fix for that: a private, encrypted vault for every account, deposit and nominee, kept where your family can always find it.