Unclaimed shares will be claimed in a jiffy! AI and data analytics will take command, the process will be digital

The government plans to replace the existing, time-consuming and paperwork-based process of transferring old, unclaimed shares and dividends to investors or their heirs with a digitally authenticated, consent-based and mostly paperless system. People with knowledge of the matter said in an ET report that the government is working on a new digital platform that will connect the ‘Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority’ (IEPFA) with the MCA21 portal for corporate filings, depositories, registrars and transfer agents, banks, payment systems, DigiLocker, Aadhaar authentication and other official platforms through application programming interface (API). People said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analytics will be used for different tasks.

Settlement of unclaimed shares

IEPFA, functioning under the Ministry of Corporate Affairs, oversees such transfers made by the respective companies. He said the new system will save investors from providing information or documents that are already held by different public or regulated entities and will – with the consent of the claimant – automatically pull verified information from these digital sources.

Companies generally transfer to IEPFA those shares, dividends and matured debentures which remain unclaimed for seven years. The existing IEPFA portal to apply for asset transfer, though a vast improvement over the earlier time-consuming system, still requires claimants to interact with multiple stakeholders and submit the same documents repeatedly. This makes the process time consuming as the relevant information is scattered across different platforms.

How will the new portal help?

The new portal will provide a single interface which will include all the processes like claim submission, document verification, status check, deficiency removal, clearance and payment. Through the portal, the Ministry of Corporate Affairs also aims to differentiate the process based on risk. This means that simple and low-cost claims with full digital verification will be processed faster, while more complex cases will be investigated in detail. This will speed up the transfer process without compromising on fraud prevention methods.