Unclaimed financial assets and digital frauds are emerging challenges to trust in formal finance. Suggest institutional measures to address them.

People trust a bank when they believe their money is safe and they can get it back. Both beliefs are under strain. On 31 Jan 2026, RBI's Depositor Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund held ₹60,518 crore of unclaimed bank deposits. By Feb 2026, only ₹5,777 crore of unclaimed assets had been returned [1]. Digital frauds also hit first-time users. Both problems need lasting institutional fixes, not one-off drives.

How they erode trust

• Dormancy pipeline: an account with no transaction by the customer for two years becomes inoperative. In Aug 2022, nearly one in five PMJDY accounts was inoperative [2]. Deposits unclaimed for 10 years move to the DEA Fund [3].
• Missing nominees: when an account holder dies, the family may not know the account exists.
• Digital frauds target new users brought in by inclusion drives. They may then go back to cash and moneylenders.

Measures against unclaimed assets

• Nomination at source: make nomination updates for savings accounts and lockers routine, as the 2026 DFS saturation campaign does [4].
• Reactivation-first camps: SLBCs should give each Gram Panchayat camp a list of its inoperative accounts. Success should be counted as accounts reactivated, not camps held.
• One claim window: expand RBI's UDGAM portal [5] and the joint RBI–IRDAI–SEBI drive [1] into a single search covering deposits, insurance and securities.
• Time-bound settlement: heirs can claim money already moved to the DEA Fund, and the Fund repays the bank [3]. Banks should settle these claims within a fixed deadline.

Measures against digital frauds

• Last-mile awareness: make permanent the digital-fraud awareness sessions now run in FI camps [4], using SLBCs and panchayats.
• Grievance redressal: publicise the RBI Ombudsman as the next step when a bank does not resolve a complaint [5]. Set deadlines for refunds.
• Clean KYC data: use Aadhaar seeding and C-KYC IDs [4] to make fake and mule accounts harder to open.
• Coordination: set up regular data-sharing between banks, telecom operators and the police to trace and freeze fraud proceeds.

Unclaimed assets and frauds both show that opening an account does not make it secure. The approach should move from enrolling people to protecting them, with prevention through nomination and KYC, quick redressal, and a single place to claim money. This would make financial inclusion truly meaningful (SDG 8.10) and keep the trust that formal finance depends on.