The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has revealed that unclaimed deposits across Indian banks reached a staggering ₹62,314 crore by the end of 2024. These funds are held in accounts that have remained inactive for 10 years or more.
Public sector banks hold the vast majority of this money, totalling ₹50,907.91 crore. The State Bank of India (SBI) leads the list with ₹16,968.41 crore in unclaimed funds, according to the RBI's year-ender report.
These unclaimed deposits have been growing rapidly in the past few years. It has grown more than double in the past three years, since 2021, when the corresponding data stood at ₹31,077.88 crore.
It is worth remembering that Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman launched an awareness campaign 'Your Money, Your Right’, in October 2025 to unlock these deposits, Livemint reported earlier.
(Unclaimed with commercial banks, including RRBs; accounts not operated for 10 or more years. Source: RBI)
Amount transferred to the DEA Fund
Meanwhile, it is vital to note that the outstanding credit amount of any account with any bank which has not been operated upon for over ten years or any deposit or any amount remaining unclaimed for more than ten years, is transferred to the Depositor Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund of RBI on the last working day of the subsequent month.
How to reclaim the unclaimed deposits?
Here we share the process to reclaim the unclaimed deposits lying with a bank:
- A claim for the unclaimed deposit may be lodged by anyone to activate the account, whether it is a customer, survivor, legal heir, or authorised signatory, as applicable.
- The customer may visit the bank branch (e.g. SBI) with all the necessary KYC, or Know Your Customer, documents. If the customer wants to activate and continue operations in the account, the bank branch will accept the specific request from the customer and reactivate the account as soon as it receives the requisite documents.
- In the event of final claims and account closure, the bank branch will accept a specific request from the customer to process it accordingly.
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