Here is how you can lay claim to those long-forgotten assets
It had all the makings of a scam, or so she thought. When Alka Gupta, a resident of Delhi, received a letter recently from a firm that she had not heard of before, she decided to ignore it. The letter claimed that her shares, lying unclaimed, were now worth several lakhs of rupees. This is a scam, she thought to herself, several times until it hit her. Thirty years ago, Gupta had subscribed to the initial public offering (IPO) of one of the top banks of India and had forgotten all about it.
A couple of weeks after she got the letter, Gupta (55) decided to check its veracity with GLC Wealth Advisory, the firm that had mailed her. It opened up a world of riches. “I went to their office. People there helped me with the documentation to reclaim my money," says Gupta. Yet, it took more than a year for Gupta to lay her hands on that small fortune.
For Gupta, this would not have been possible but for the services of GLC Wealth, a Delhi-based financial and legal advisory. The firm identifies and traces investors who have forgotten their investments in shares, <a class=«autobacklink-topic» target="_blank" href=«https://www.livemint.com/topic/real-estate» data-name="<a href=" https: www.livemint.com topic>real estate
">real estate, and <a class=«autobacklink-topic» target="_blank" href=«https://www.livemint.com/topic/government-securities» data-name="<a href=" https: www.livemint.com topic>government securities">government securities, among others, and never claimed them.
Notably, all shares, dividends, debentures and accumulated interest that have remained unclaimed for seven years or more get transferred to the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF), a repository set up under the Companies Act, 1956. Provisional data from
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