If you’ve lost old share certificates, there’s a chance you could still reclaim your investments — but it won’t be instant, and it might take a bit of effort.
Take for example someone whose father had bought shares of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) back in 1990. The physical share certificates are missing, and there’s no memory of how many shares were bought. Some dividends came in years ago, but then it all went quiet. So what happens now?
First off, it’s possible to recover such shares — even if they've been dormant for years. Here’s why.
If no one claims dividends or touches a shareholding for seven years after the last annual general meeting, the company usually hands over both the shares and the unclaimed dividends to the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF). This is a government-controlled account meant to hold on to such inactive investments.
Once transferred, these shares and funds remain parked with the IEPF Authority until the rightful owner — or their legal heir or nominee — comes forward to claim them.
There’s a defined process to do this. But before heading to the IEPF, you’ll need to go through a few steps with the company that originally issued the shares — in this case, L&T.
Here’s the general route people take:
-- Contact the company’s Registrar and Transfer Agent (RTA) to report the loss of the share certificates. Every company works with an RTA to handle such matters.
-- File a police report stating the certificates are lost. This is mainly to avoid someone else misusing them.
-- Put out a newspaper advertisement announcing the loss.
-- Prepare an affidavit declaring that the shares haven’t been pledged, sold, or handed over to anyone else.
-- Provide an indemnity bond, if the company asks for it. This is a kind of legal assurance, often supported by a guarantor, to cover the company in case someone else claims the same shares.
-- Once that’s done, people typically apply for a duplicate share certificate.
That’s still not the end of the road. The original shareholder, or their nominee or legal heir, can put in a claim through the IEPF website. The process goes like this:
Download and fill out IEPF Form 5. This includes details like your name, address, the company’s name, folio number, and number of shares.
Gather supporting documents. These may include:
(i) The original or duplicate share certificate
(ii) ID proof like Aadhaar, passport, or PAN card
(iii) Dividend warrants or holding statements
(iv) Succession certificate, death certificate, or gift deed if the original shareholder has passed away
(v) Cancelled cheque or bank statement to confirm your bank account
(vi) Self-attest all the documents and send them to the Nodal Officer or Registrar mentioned on the company’s website. They’ll verify everything and forward the claim to the IEPF Authority.
This process can take time — sometimes weeks, sometimes months. Claims are checked carefully, and once everything is cleared, the shares are moved into a demat account and any leftover dividend is credited to your bank.
Yes — all this assumes you’ve got at least some idea of what was originally bought. If there’s no record at all — no old dividend stubs, no folio numbers — it might be harder, but not necessarily impossible. RTAs and companies do keep old records, and sometimes things can be tracked down using your father's PAN number or address at the time.
It’s a slow process, but not out of reach. If someone’s sitting on long-forgotten shares, especially from the 80s or 90s, it might be worth looking into. A lot of such investments are now worth quite a bit, and they’re just lying unclaimed.
No guarantee of results, of course. But checking could be better than leaving it buried in old drawers.
