Unclaimed Mutual Fund Money: Many people in India keep investing in mutual funds every year, but a lot of that money never reaches them again. This usually happens when someone changes their house, phone number or bank account and forgets to update the records. Some people even forget that they had invested long ago. Because of this, many crores of rupees stay unclaimed for years.
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How to check if you have any unclaimed money?
To check if you have any unclaimed funds:
- Check on your AMC’s website
- Check the website of the Registrar & Transfer Agent (RTA)
- Log in to MF Central at www.mfcentral.com with your user ID, password or OTP
- Check your Consolidated Account Statements (CAS) to see if you have an unpaid/unclaimed amount
- Search on MITRA
Mutual funds also send periodic reminders to investors about the unclaimed amount.
How to claim an unclaimed amount?
Once you have checked if you have an unclaimed amount, you can follow these steps to claim your money:
- Download the form available on AMC’s website.
- Fill the form and submit it to the AMC/RTA’s office.
- After verification, the unclaimed amount will be transferred to you from the Unclaimed Dividend and Redemption Scheme (UDRS), along with the appreciation.
Unclaimed Money keeps Increasing
New data from SEBI shows that the problem got even worse in the last financial year. During 2024-25, the amount of unclaimed mutual fund money grew almost 21% in just one year. It went up to ₹3,452 crore from ₹2,862 crore. This is a very big increase, and it shows how many people are not checking their old investments. SEBI and AMFI keep telling investors to look for their lost folios on AMC websites or on the MITRA system and claim them back.
An amount becomes unclaimed when a mutual fund tries to send the money, but the bank does not accept it. This can happen if the person closed the bank account or did not update their details, or if the cheque never reached the right address. When this happens, the fund company keeps the money aside and places it into a special unclaimed scheme.
How the Unclaimed Scheme Works?
The unclaimed money goes into something called the Unclaimed Dividend and Redemption Scheme, also known as UDRS. The Finance Ministry explains it clearly in its booklet Your Money, Your Right.
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It says, “Mutual Funds are permitted to invest the unclaimed amounts in call money market, money market instruments or in a separate plan of Overnight scheme/Liquid scheme/Money Market Mutual Funds, which generally carry much reduced capital risk and also provide returns. The separate plan specifically floated by Mutual Funds for deployment of unclaimed amounts is known as Unclaimed Dividend/Redemption Scheme (UDRS).”
If a person claims this money within 3 years, they get both the original amount and the growth. After 3 years, the extra growth goes to an investor education fund, and the person only gets the amount that remained after those first 3 years.
MITRA Helps Track Forgotten Investments
India now has a platform called MITRA that helps people find their old or inactive folios. The booklet says, “An inactive folio is where no investor-initiated transaction (financial or non-financial) has taken place in the last 10 years, but unit balance is available in the folio.”
SEBI explains, “The mutual fund investment tracing and retrieval assistant (MITRA) has been launched to provide investors with a searchable database of inactive and unclaimed mutual fund folios at an industry level, thereby empowering them in various aspects.”
People can use MITRA on the MF Central website to search their details and recover money they forgot years ago.
What Happens when someone Claims the Money?
When someone files to get their money back, the mutual fund processes it like a normal redemption. The value depends on the NAV on the day the form reaches them. Usually, the payment comes in 2 to 5 days. If it takes longer than a week or if the person gets no reply, they can complain to the AMC or RTA. If the issue still stays unresolved, they can then report it on SEBI’s SCORES portal.
