Recovery of Unclaimed Physical Shares and Dormant Investments
When you hear about the share and stock market for the first time, it makes you curious about what it’s all about. Well, why not? Having the facility to be able to invest money and having every financial service available to them at their doorstep is what modern investors want. The institutions which provide these financial services are known as Financial Institutions. They are companies through whom one can invest his money and can buy financial services along with buying shares.
The part when one receives a dividend from their money invested in shares is the best for an investor. But sometimes, it happens that the customer or the shareholder forgets to redeem or claim the investment and the dividend they have gained for long periods. This mainly happens due to the inability of investors in keeping a tab of all his small or large investments for a long period. They can continue to gain more and more profits, but all that profit that is being gained is going to waste since the owner or the shareholder has already forgotten about the existence of all this unclaimed investment. After a while, the owner might remember about all the unclaimed money which rightfully belongs to him and still left to be claimed. And that is where IEPF come in.
What Is IEPF?
Investor Education & Protection Fund or IEPF, is a fund put together by the government using all the unclaimed investments and dividends which are yet to be claimed. When a customer attempts to reclaim or redeem all these funds from their respective financial institutions and companies, they can approach the IEPF to recover their physical shares after thorough verification of their ownership documents. It educates investors regarding the procedure to get through the whole situation with ease. Along with that IEPF also helps to spread awareness and educate the investors about these situations so that they can avoid putting themselves in any losses.
The rules and regulations of the IEPF say a company must transfer the shares and lying dividend lying dormant for more than 7 years to this fund. There are times when parents or grandparents do not nominate an heir to their physical shares and investments before their death and children come to claim the dividends on investments. In this case, the claimants must first resolve the dispute by hiring a legal firm to affirm their heirship on the investment and then move to IEPF for the claim of funds.
