UNCLAIMED DEPOSITS: DISCOVER THE TREASURE IN THE BANK

The Governments initiative towards financial inclusion has led to the opening of bank accounts by a very large number of people in the country, and many people hold multiple accounts with different banks. Over time, many of these accounts are forgotten. Amounts which remain unclaimed, or accounts which are not operated for ten years, are transferred by banks to the Depositor Education and Awareness Fund (DEA Fund) maintained by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) under Section 26A of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949. As per the RBI balance sheet, the Fund stood at ₹1,12,564.29 crore on 31 March 2026. The money continues to belong to the depositor, and the depositor or the legal heir can claim it from the bank at any time. This descriptive and doctrinal study, based on secondary data, analyses the balance of the DEA Fund from 2014-15 to 2025-26 using growth rates, a log-linear trend model and a piecewise trend test, examines the distribution of unclaimed deposits across bank groups and banks, reviews the legal and regulatory framework, and explains the procedure for tracing and claiming unclaimed deposits. The Fund grew more than fourteen times at a compound annual growth rate of about 27.4 per cent.