The RBI has launched a new centralized portal named UDGAM (Unclaimed Deposits – Gateway to Access Information) on 17th August 2023 (via link) – that allows common people to search for unclaimed deposits across multiple Indian banks using a single, common interface.
Link to Udgam search portal below:
As I had informed in an earlier post on How Claim Unclaimed Deposits in Banks in India, the Reserve Bank of India had announced the development of a centralised web portal for searching unclaimed deposits as part of the Statement on Developmental & Regulatory Policies dated April 06, 2023.
And now, the portal has finally been launched.
In India, there are thousands of crores (Rs 35,000 crore as per 2022-23) lying across banks as unclaimed deposits. So many people want to know if there is some money that they are unaware of. And given the increasing trend in the number of unclaimed deposits, RBI has been undertaking public awareness campaigns from time to time. And development and launch of this centralized search portal is a step in this direction.
If an account or deposit doesn’t have any transactions for more than 2 years, it becomes inoperative or dormant. The bank is required to contact the customer via e-mail, phone, SMS, mails about this. But if this account/deposit does not see any activity (like deposit or withdrawal) from the accountholder for 10 or more years, then such accounts are deemed as Unclaimed Deposits.
Many banks proactively put out a list of names and addresses of customers with inoperative accounts and unclaimed deposits regularly. Till now the one needed to check individual banks’ websites to find the unclaimed deposits.
But with RBI launching UDGAM – the Centralized RBI Portal to Track Unclaimed Deposits, it will become much easier for a people and their family to search for their unclaimed deposits in a user-friendly manner and in a single place.
At the time of launch, the search facility will be available for data of unclaimed deposits of only 7 banks on the portal. These are State Bank of India (SBI), Punjab National Bank, Central Bank of India, Dhanlaxmi Bank Ltd, South Indian Bank Ltd., DBS Bank India Ltd., and Citibank. The facility for the remaining Banks in India on the portal would be made available in a phased manner by 15 October 2023.
So that was about UDGAM – the newly launched Centralized RBI Portal to search for Unclaimed Deposits in India (2023).