IEPF claims explained: how to get your shares back
Shares unclaimed for seven years move to the IEPF. They are not lost — but getting them back is a formal process where most claims fail on paperwork, not on merit.
If dividends on a shareholding go uncollected for seven consecutive years, both the dividends and the underlying shares are transferred to the Investor Education and Protection Fund. For most families this comes as a shock, usually discovered when someone tries to sell an inherited holding and finds the folio empty.
The shares are not gone
Transfer to the IEPF is a custodial arrangement, not a forfeiture. The rightful owner — or a nominee or legal heir — retains a full right to reclaim both the securities and the dividends, along with any bonus shares issued in the interim.
What the process actually involves
- Form IEPF-5 is filed online on the MCA portal, generating an acknowledgement number.
- A printed copy, along with an indemnity bond and advance receipt on stamp paper, is sent to the company’s nodal officer.
- The nodal officer verifies the claim against company records and files a verification report with the IEPF Authority.
- The Authority processes the report and credits the shares to your demat account, with dividends paid to the linked bank account.
Why claims get rejected
In our experience almost every rejection is procedural rather than substantive:
- Signature on the claim does not match the specimen held by the registrar.
- The indemnity bond is on the wrong stamp value, or is unsigned by a witness.
- The demat account named does not match the claimant’s PAN.
- For transmission cases, succession evidence is incomplete or the value crosses a threshold requiring a succession certificate.
How long it takes
A clean claim typically settles in four to eight months. The bottleneck is nearly always the nodal officer’s verification, not the IEPF Authority. Sustained weekly follow-up matters far more than anything else you can do.
If you have already been rejected
A rejection is not final. Identify the defect stated in the rejection communication, cure it, and refile. We regularly recover claims that failed on the first attempt.
