Mohandas Pai, former CFO of Infosys, has voiced strong support for overhauling the Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA), citing serious inefficiencies and personal distress caused by the current process.
“Very correct. Things are held up for months, agents call up ask for money to fix things. Need urgent reform better oversight. Once cis give concurrence why should IEPFA hold up matters? Pl reform Sitharaman, Narendra Modi. My family has suffered too immensely,” Pai posted on X.
Pai's comments came in response to economist Sanjeev Sanyal, who flagged systemic flaws in the IEPFA and called it a candidate for process reform.
Sanyal wrote on X, “The Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority is supposed to be the agency that returns unclaimed shares, debentures etc to the rightful investor. However, its services remain sub-par from its grievance redressal system to the user interface of its website. A candidate for process reform.”
In a column, Sanyal elaborated that the IEPFA was set up in 2016 under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs as a custodian of unclaimed investor funds. These include dividends, matured corporate deposits and shares that have remained unclaimed for over seven years. He highlighted that while the fund has swelled over the years, actual disbursal has remained dismal.
“Out of 11,450 lakh unclaimed shares lying with the fund, only 50.95 lakh were returned to the investors until October 31, 2022,” he noted.
Sanyal detailed several pain points in the refund process: a glitch-prone portal, poor interface, multiple OTP layers for different signatories, and no system for tracking applications by investors, companies, or the IEPFA itself. He also flagged overly rigid documentation requirements, citing that claimants must still submit FIRs and newspaper ads despite relaxed norms from Sebi.
The absence of a responsive helpline and the emergence of middlemen charging 20–50% of locked value were also flagged as serious concerns.
Sanyal added that countries like Australia, the US, and Canada run more citizen-friendly systems for unclaimed property. In contrast, India’s system, he wrote, often treats the claimant "with suspicion".
While Sebi has made efforts to ease future asset transmission through simpler nomination rules and DigiLocker use, Sanyal argued that existing backlogs and user experience gaps in IEPFA still need urgent attention. He suggested upgrades to the portal’s infrastructure, real-time tracking of claim status, rationalised documentation norms, and a proper grievance redressal mechanism backed by user feedback. “This is an area that clearly needs to be improved for ease of living,” Sanyal wrote.