RBI's Scheme to Return Unclaimed Deposits, and How to Claim Yours

Updated 21 October 2026: the scheme ended on 30 September 2026. This page now explains what it was and how to claim today.

As of 30 June 2026, the RBI’s Depositor Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund held Rs 86,917 crore of deposits that nobody had claimed, according to the Finance Ministry’s reply in Parliament. Most of it belongs to ordinary families who do not know the account exists.

For decades, returning that money was work a branch did reluctantly. In October 2025 the RBI tried to change that with its Scheme for Facilitating Accelerated Payout of Inoperative Accounts and Unclaimed Deposits. For one year, banks earned a payment for every unclaimed deposit they returned: 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 unclaimed for more than a decade.

The scheme ran until 30 September 2026 and has now ended. As of 21 October 2026, the RBI has not published a final count of how much it returned. We will add it here when it does.

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

What the end of the scheme changes, and what it does not

• Your money has not gone anywhere. Unclaimed deposits stay claimable forever, and savings balances keep earning interest inside the fund. Nothing expired on 1 October.
• Banks no longer earn the extra payment. Some branches may move a little slower than they did during the scheme. The rules for claiming are the same.
• The paths are well worn. The “Your Money, Your Right” campaign ran camps in 748 districts in late 2025, and branch staff processed more of these claims in the past year than in many before it. The paperwork is familiar to them now.
• The search is still easy. The RBI’s UDGAM portal covers 30 banks holding roughly 90 percent of all unclaimed deposits.

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. It includes the RBI’s 2025 rules for claims after a death, under which nominees never need court documents and most families never need a succession certificate.

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.
• If a claim drags, write to the branch manager, then the bank’s grievance cell, then the RBI Ombudsman at cms.rbi.org.in.
• Never pay anyone to “release” a deposit. The process is free.
• 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.