How to claim a bank account after the account holder dies

Before anything else: stop all use of the deceased person's debit card, cheques, net banking and UPI. Do not withdraw "just enough for the funeral". Do not let a standing instruction keep running if you can stop it.

This is not a formality. Once the holder has died, the money in the account belongs to the estate, and operating the account afterwards — even with the correct PIN, even for genuinely legitimate family expenses — can be treated as unauthorised. In practice it also delays the claim, because the bank has to reconcile transactions that occurred after the date of death before it will settle.

Pay urgent expenses from your own account and keep the receipts. Legitimate expenses can be reclaimed from the estate later, and the paper trail protects you.

Ask the bank for a statement of all relationships held against the deceased person's customer ID. One customer ID can carry a savings account, several fixed deposits, a recurring deposit, a locker and a demat account, and families routinely claim the savings account and miss the rest.

Look for accounts at other banks in the passbook cupboard, in old cheque books, and in the income tax returns — interest income points at accounts nobody remembered. Salary accounts from previous employers are a common find, often with a small balance and an unclaimed insurance rider attached.

Do not forget co-operative banks and small finance banks, where records may still be substantially paper-based.

For accounts nobody in the family knows about, there is a national search. Where a savings or current account has not been operated for ten years, or a term deposit has been unclaimed for ten years past maturity, the balance is transferred to the Reserve Bank's Depositor Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund. The money is not lost: the legal heirs can still claim it from the bank where it was held, with interest where the account was interest-bearing, and the bank then recovers it from the RBI.

The RBI runs a portal called UDGAM (udgam.rbi.org.in) where you can search for unclaimed deposits across participating banks. It is worth a search even if you think you have found everything — it is the only place a decades-dormant account is likely to surface.

This decides the entire route, so settle it before you fill in anything.

Joint account with a survivorship mandate — where the account was opened as "either or survivor", "former or survivor", "anyone or survivor" or similar, the survivor can give the bank a valid discharge, and the bank is within its rights to pay the survivor unless a court has restrained it. The deceased holder's name is removed and the account continues. This is the fastest case by a wide margin.

Single account with a registered nominee — the nominee claims. No court document is normally required, whatever the balance.

Single account with no nominee — the legal heirs claim, and the bank's own settlement policy decides what is required. Smaller balances are commonly settled against an indemnity and no-objection certificates from the other heirs; larger ones may need a succession certificate.

Joint account without a survivorship mandate — treated closer to a single account; the deceased holder's share passes to their heirs rather than automatically to the other holder.

Ask the branch for its deceased claim or claim settlement form. This is not the same as an account closure form, and being handed the wrong one is a common source of delay.

Where the account was held either or survivor, or where a nomination is registered, the Reserve Bank has told banks to settle by releasing the balance to the survivor or nominee without insisting on a succession certificate, letters of administration, probate or an indemnity bond. If a branch asks you for any of those on a nominated or either-or-survivor account, that instruction is the thing to cite.

The Reserve Bank also requires banks to settle a deceased depositor's claim within 15 days of receiving it, once proof of death and the claimant's identification are in. Banks must also report claims still pending beyond that period to the Customer Service Committee of their Board, with reasons — which is exactly why quoting the 15-day limit in a follow-up tends to work.

Every bank is also required to have a published policy for settling these claims, covering the documentation for cases without nomination. Ask for that policy in writing. Having it in hand is the most effective way to push back when a counter demands a succession certificate for a balance the policy says can be settled on an indemnity.

Submit the papers together, get a stamped acknowledgement with a reference number, and note the name of the official who accepted it. Claims stall quietly, and a reference number is what lets you escalate.

Where the account is settled rather than continued, the balance is paid into the claimant's own account, so your KYC needs to be complete.

A bank account is rarely just a balance. Work through what else was hanging off it: standing instructions and SIPs that will keep failing, ECS mandates for insurance premiums that may lapse a policy if they stop, a locker in the same branch, a linked demat account, and a sweep-in fixed deposit.

Insurance premiums deserve particular attention. If a life policy on another family member was being paid from this account, the mandate stops and the policy can lapse. Move that mandate before the account is closed, not after.

If there was a locker, the locker claim is a separate process with its own requirements, usually involving an inventory taken in the presence of witnesses.

Interest credited up to the date of death belongs to the estate and is generally reported in the deceased person's final return; interest after that is generally the claimant's. Any Form 15G or 15H the holder had filed stops applying, so tax may begin to be deducted where it previously was not.

Ask for a final statement and an interest certificate up to the date of settlement. You will need both for the final income tax return, and getting them later, after the account is closed, is materially harder.

Deceased claims are settled routinely and most branches handle them properly. Where one does not, the escalation path is well established: the branch manager, then the bank's own grievance redressal officer and nodal officer, and then the Reserve Bank's integrated ombudsman scheme, which costs nothing to use.

Quote the bank's own settlement policy and its stated time limit in the complaint. An escalation that cites the bank's published commitment is answered very differently from one that simply expresses frustration.