Find Out If You Have IEPF Unclaimed Shares in Your Name

The Official IEPFA Portals, and What Each One Does

The Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA) was established on 7 September 2016 under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Its official website, the IEPFA Integrated Portal at iepfa.gov.in, is where the government's own records and claim tools sit. If you would rather look yourself before submitting anything, these are the pages that matter.

• IEPFA search portal — the New Search Facility lets you run a self-search against the database the IEPF Authority maintains from companies' own filings, to see whether an unclaimed or unpaid amount is recorded in your name. It requires login and registration, and the Authority currently describes it as a beta release.

• IEPFA claim portal and refund portal — the Claim Refund route, where a traced holding becomes an actual claim through Form IEPF-5.

• MCA IEPFA services — the Authority's service pages cover Search Unclaimed/Unpaid Amount, Claim Refund, Forms, and Upload E-Form, with e-form submission handled on the MCA portal itself.

Two things catch people out. The search runs on what companies have filed, so a holding under an old name, an initial, or a former address may not surface even though it exists. And a search result is not a claim — recovering the shares still means filing Form IEPF-5 and sending the physical document set to the company's Nodal Officer.

For the current portal links, registration steps and the errors people hit most often, see our guide to the IEPF portal login for MCA V3 and IEPFA. If you would rather not work through the portals at all, the form above puts the same search in our hands at no cost.

What Are Unclaimed Shares — and Why Might You Have Them?

Under Section 124(6) of the Companies Act, 2013, if the dividends on your shares stay unclaimed for seven consecutive years, the company is legally required to transfer both the unclaimed dividends and the underlying shares to the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF), managed by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs.

The good news: there is no deadline to claim them back. Shares sitting in IEPF can be recovered by the rightful owner — or their legal heirs — at any time, through the IEPF-5 process.

As of March 2022, shares worth over ₹68,800 crore had been transferred to the IEPF — an enormous pool of forgotten holdings, much of it belonging to investors who don't even know their shares were moved.

What You Need to Search for Your Unclaimed Shares

You don't need to search anywhere yourself, and you don't need perfect records. Give us what you can — our team searches the IEPF records, the Registrars (RTAs) and the depositories (NSDL/CDSL) for you. The more of the details below you can provide, the faster and more accurately we can match your holdings.

• Shareholder's name (required) — the name the shares were originally held in. If it may have been recorded slightly differently — a maiden name, initials, a spelling variation — tell us that too.

• Father's name — shareholder records were often filed under the father's name, so this significantly improves matching.

• Address at the time of purchase — even an approximate or old address helps narrow the search. Don't worry if you can't remember it exactly; anything you recall is useful.

• Folio number (if you have it) — not required, but if you have an old share certificate or statement showing a folio number, it lets us match against our records far more precisely.

• Mobile number and email (required) — so we can keep searching on your behalf and reach out the moment we find something.

That's all we need to start. Submit the form above and our team takes it from here — searching across IEPF, the RTAs and the depositories, and following up as soon as we have a match.

Company names change over the years — Satyam became Tech Mahindra, for example — so even if you think a company no longer exists, we still check. You never have to work any of this out yourself.

Searching for Indian Shares from Abroad

NRIs can trace Indian shares the same way — searching the IEPF portal and company RTAs by name or PAN — without travelling to India. Recovery requires an Indian PAN, an NRO/NRE-linked demat account, and apostilled or attested documents, after which the holdings are reclaimed through Form IEPF-5.

In practice the search is identical wherever you live; it is the paperwork that differs. Documents signed outside India usually need notarisation and apostille or consular attestation, and the receiving demat account has to be correctly linked to an NRO or NRE account. We manage that coordination for clients across the USA, UK, Canada, the Gulf, Singapore and Australia — see our NRI share recovery service.

Why Use Assisted Recovery Instead of Doing It Yourself

You can file an IEPF claim yourself, and the portals are open to everyone. What stops most people is not the filing — it is everything attached to it. Claims are document-heavy and unforgiving: a signature or name that does not match a decades-old folio, an indemnity bond for IEPF Form 5 executed on the wrong stamp paper, or a missing witness address is enough for the company's Nodal Officer to return the whole set.

Where the shareholder has died, the claim also becomes a transmission matter with succession documentation attached, and that is where self-filed claims most often stall for months.

Our model is straightforward: there is nothing to pay upfront. The preliminary search and assessment are free, and you pay a success fee only once your shares are actually credited to your demat account. No token fee, no consultation fee.

Reviewed by Sharlee Garg, Company Secretary & Advocate.