Reserve Bank of India ( RBI ) has launched ‘ 100 Days 100 Pays ‘ campaign on 1st June . Its purpose is to find out and settle the top 100 unclaimed deposits lying in banks. Every bank in 100 districts will come under its ambit.
This campaign will help the central bank’s efforts to reduce unclaimed deposits. RBI wants that the unclaimed deposits lying in the banks should be traced and handed over to their rightful claimants. If there is no activity in a bank account for 10 years or more, then the money deposited in it is considered as unclaimed deposit.
Reason for unclaimed deposit
Banks transfer unclaimed deposits to the Depositor Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund, which is maintained by the RBI. Depositors have the right to claim the money deposited in their account even later. RBI believes that the reason for the increase in the volume of unclaimed deposits is that people do not close their savings / current accounts. In many cases, this money belongs to depositors who have passed away. In such cases the nominee or legal heir does not come forward to claim the money.
How much money in unclaimed deposit
In a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Bhagwat Karad told about unclaimed deposits of banks. He had said that till February 2023, there were unclaimed deposits of Rs 35,012 crore in public sector banks (PSU Banks). State Bank of India has the highest number of unclaimed deposits. This is around Rs 8,086 crore. Punjab National Bank is on the second position. PNB has unclaimed deposits of Rs 5,340 crore. 4,558 crore in Canara Bank and Rs 3,904 crore in Bank of Baroda.
Can find out like this
Every bank will have to give details of unclaimed accounts on its website. In this, such details will also have to be given, with the help of which it can be easy to identify such account holder. Customers can visit the bank branch after checking the details on the bank’s website. There the formalities related to Know Your Customer have to be completed along with the claim form.
Centralized web portal will help
Apart from this campaign, RBI has also said that it will create a centralized web portal. People will be able to get information about unclaimed deposits of different banks on this. Search results will be improved with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). With this, people will get information about their money, which they are not aware of.
Right now people have to visit the website of different banks to find out about it. From the new web portal, people will get information about all unclaimed bank deposits in one click. Sanchit Garg, co-founder and CEO of GLC Wealth Advisors LLP, said that this effort of RBI can prove to be very helpful in settling the cases of unclaimed deposits.
