There is a particular kind of Indian investor I have come to admire over the years—disciplined, patient, and largely immune to fads. They began a few SIPs decades ago, quietly added to them, never panicked during crashes, and never chased the hot sector of the moment.
They built real wealth—not through brilliance, but through consistency and time. Their family will be materially better off because of what they did.
And yet, when such a person dies, what often follows is a scene their careful investing was never meant to produce.
A spouse who knows money exists somewhere but cannot say where. Children logging into the wrong portals with the wrong passwords. A financial institution that releases nothing without documents no one can obtain. Accounts opened in the early days of online investing and never mentioned again. Policies bought from an agent who has long since retired.
A portfolio that took thirty years to build, now frozen solid. Not because of market failure, but because nobody left a map.
This is the inheritance nobody prepares for, and it is far more common than the financial services industry likes to admit.
The responsibility falls entirely on the investor. Nobody will remind you.
A son or daughter cannot easily walk up to an ageing parent and say, “Please tell me where everything is kept.” The parent may hear something else in that request—that the child is planning for their death. It is an unfair interpretation of a reasonable concern, but it is common enough that the conversation never happens.
You have to decide to do it yourself.
Everyone who reads this nods in agreement. Almost nobody acts until it is too late.
The nomination myth
Last August, I wrote about a legal misunderstanding that makes the problem worse. Every financial product comes with a nomination form—a mandatory field most people fill with a family member’s name and consider the matter settled.
But a nominee is not an inheritor.
A nominee is essentially a custodian, authorized to collect the asset from the institution after your death and then obligated to distribute it to the rightful legal heirs according to succession law. The Supreme Court confirmed this definitively in 2023: nomination does not override inheritance. It is an administrative convenience, not an estate planning tool.
Many investors have carefully split percentages between nominees, as Sebi’s mutual fund rules permit, and concluded their family’s financial future is secured.
It is not.
Only a Will does that job.
The simple solution
The solution, fortunately, is not complicated. It has two parts.
First, write a Will. It need not be elaborate or expensive, but it must be drafted by a lawyer and signed in the presence of two witnesses who are not beneficiaries. That is the legal minimum for enforceability.
Second—and this is the part almost nobody thinks about—leave behind a simple written record of your financial life. Not your investment philosophy or your asset allocation views, but plain, practical facts.
The financial map
What should that record contain?
Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist whose 87-word masterclass on financial planning I have written about before, would appreciate this list for the same reason he appreciated his own: you can add nothing, and you can remove nothing.
- Bank account numbers and IFSC codes.
- Demat account details and the depository participant’s name.
- Insurance policy numbers and company names.
- Mutual fund folios—just the numbers, not the values.
- PPF account details.
- The name and phone number of your financial adviser, if you have one.
- Physical location of documents: “Top drawer, bedroom cupboard.”
That is it.
Not your portfolio value. Not your passwords—those belong in a separate secure system your family knows about.
Just enough information so someone can walk into a bank branch or registrar’s office and say, “My father had an account here.”
A single page of clear notes, updated every year or two, kept somewhere your family knows to look.
This requires no expertise and remarkably little time. What it requires is the same quality that made you a good long-term investor: the willingness to do something unglamorous today for the benefit of people tomorrow.
The investment is unfinished until the people who inherit it can actually find it.
Dhirendra Kumar is founder and chief executive officer of Value Research, an independent investment advisory firm