A Campaign Built Around Depositor Rights
As part of its Year Ender 2025 review, the Department of Financial Services highlighted the outcomes of a nationwide, three-month awareness campaign on unclaimed financial assets, titled "Aapki Poonji, Aapka Adhikar" (Your Money, Your Right), which ran from October to December 2025.
Launched by the Finance Minister, the campaign was designed around three pillars — Awareness, Accessibility, and Action — to help citizens identify and reclaim dormant deposits, unclaimed shares, dividends, and insurance proceeds lying unclaimed with banks and financial institutions.
By the time the review was published in January 2026, the drive had led to the restitution of claims worth ₹4,500 crore to their rightful owners, marking one of the largest such recovery exercises undertaken in the sector.
Structural Reforms Behind the Numbers
The campaign's success has been underpinned by structural reforms under the Banking Laws (Amendment) Act, 2025, which enhanced governance standards across banks, strengthened protections for depositors and investors, and improved audit quality in Public Sector Banks (PSBs).
The Act also shifted certain statutory reporting obligations from individual banks to the RBI directly, creating a more centralised and standardised compliance framework, and streamlined nomination processes to make it easier for family members to claim funds after an account holder's death — historically one of the biggest reasons deposits remain unclaimed for years.
From the 2026-27 cycle onward, related reforms are also set to affect recruitment processes conducted by the Institute of Banking Personnel Selection (IBPS) for public sector banks, reflecting the wide-ranging scope of the current banking reform cycle.
Exam-relevant details to retain: the campaign name "Aapki Poonji, Aapka Adhikar", its ₹4,500 crore restitution figure, and its three pillars of Awareness, Accessibility, and Action.
Source: pib.gov.in
