SEBI collaborates with DigiLocker to reduce unclaimed assets

On 19-3-2025, the Securities and Exchange Board of India issued a circular titled “Harnessing DigiLocker as a Digital Public Infrastructure for Reducing Unclaimed Assets in the Indian Securities Market” to address the issue of unclaimed financial assets. The provisions will come into effect on 1-4-2025.

Key Points:

1. SEBI and DigiLocker have committed to enhance investor protection through this initiative.

2. Aims to:

   • facilitate seamless access to financial records;

   • minimize unclaimed assets;

   • ensure identification of assets that might otherwise remain unnoticed.

3. This initiative has enabled DigiLocker users to fetch and store their statement of holdings for shares and mutual fund units from their demat accounts along with their Consolidated Account Statement (‘CAS’).

   Effect- This has expanded the existing DigiLocker services which includes bank account statements, insurance policy certificates and NPS account statements.

4. Intimation to DigiLocker Nominees upon demise of DigiLocker user:

   • Intimation will be done through SMS or email;

   • Nominees will be able to able to access the deceased DigiLocker account through their own DigiLocker account after authentication of identity.

   • Data Access Nominees can be appointed by users within the DigiLocker application, and these nominees will be granted read-only access to the deceased DigiLocker account.

     Effect- this will ensure that essential financial information is easily accessible to the legal heirs.

   • Once the KYC Registration Agencies (‘KRA’) will notify the demise, the DigiLocker sysytem will automatically notify the Data Access Nominee.

     Effect- to facilitate the initiation of the transmission process with the relevant financial institutions.

   • KRAs will be the primary source for verifying and triggering notifications to Data Access Nominees.

5. Direction to Securities Market Intermediaries:

   • All Asset Management Companies and recognised Depositories are directed to register with DigiLocker as “Issuer” to enable users/ investors to fetch the following in their DigiLocker account:

     ✓ holding statement, as of the date immediately preceding the date of fetching;

     ✓ transaction statements for the last 30 days of mutual fund units and demat accounts.

   • Latest or last available CAS in previous 12 months of the request;

   • DigiLocker to provide the user the option to fetch CAS automatically on the 1 st of January each year.

Notes:

DigiLocker is a digital documnet wallet of the Government of India which facilitates citizens in obtaining and storing documents like Aadhaar, PAN, Driving Licence, Death Certificate, etc.