Not all kinds of fortune you come into are created equal. Cash, bank deposits, and jewellery are quite liquid, which means you're glad you got them. Then there is land. You may luck out with a property whose title is unambiguous. However, to inherit something with inadequate paperwork is a hassle, to put it mildly. But just as much of a pain are stocks you didn't know your parents or grandparents owned. They'll make you rethink your position on real estate. Dividends unclaimed for seven years and the shares attached to them are housed with the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF), run by the IEPF Authority (IEPFA), a government body under the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA). And so are unclaimed bonds and the interest earned on them. The IEPF kitty amounted to a sizeable Rs 38,280 crore ($4.6 billion) as of March 2021, a number that's likely to have risen to Rs 50,000 crore ($6 billion) by now. The IEPF was among the unclaimed public funds at the heart of a petition filed in the Supreme Court in March. It’s nothing short of a nightmare finding details of unclaimed shares on the IEPF website. This means investors have to rely on third-party service providers who can charge up to a quarter of the value of the shares to recover the money. For a fund that, if listed on India’s stock exchanges, would be among the country's 100 most-valuable companies, the IEPF cannot afford to be the black box that it is!!
Yusuf Bhandarkar
