How to claim shares and a demat account after death

Ask the depositories for a consolidated account statement against the deceased person's PAN. This will show every demat account and its holdings, across brokers.

Physical share certificates will not appear there. Look for paper certificates in files and lockers, and check old dividend warrants and bank credits for company names — a dividend credit is proof of a holding even if the certificate has been lost.

The income tax returns are again useful: dividend income and capital gains point to holdings the family has forgotten.

This is the straightforward path, and it is the reason holding shares in demat form is worth the trouble while you are alive.

Approach the broker or bank where the demat account is held. The claimant needs their own demat account for the shares to move into — the shares are transferred account to account, not sold and paid out. If you do not have one, open it before you start.

Where the account was joint, the deceased holder's name is deleted and the account continues with the survivor. Where there was a registered nominee, the nominee claims. Where there is neither, the legal heirs claim, and the value decides the paperwork.

SEBI sets the thresholds for the simplified route, and they are generous: transmission proceeds on the standard document set for holdings worth up to ₹15 lakh per beneficial owner account in demat form, and up to ₹5 lakh per listed entity for physical certificates. Below those limits, where there is no succession certificate, probate or will, the legal heirs can furnish a notarised indemnity bond on stamp paper instead of going to court.

Every company has a registrar and transfer agent, and you deal with each one separately. Expect this to be slow and expect the registrar to be strict about details.

Two things make it slower than it needs to be. First, dematerialisation is not optional: since January 2022 SEBI has required securities issued on an investor service request — transmission included — to be issued only in demat form, so the shares end up in a demat account whatever you do, and you need one before you start. Second, mismatches — a name spelled differently on the certificate than on the death certificate, an old address, an unlinked PAN — are extremely common on decades-old holdings and each one has to be resolved with an affidavit.

The request itself goes on Form ISR-4, SEBI's standard form covering transmission, issue of a duplicate certificate and consolidation of folios — revised in January 2026, so download it fresh rather than reusing a copy. If a certificate is lost, the duplicate is issued against an affidavit and an undertaking not to deal with the original should it later surface, plus a newspaper advertisement and an indemnity.

Where dividends on a shareholding remain unclaimed for seven years, both the unclaimed dividend and the underlying shares are transferred by the company to the Investor Education and Protection Fund. Families frequently discover this only when the registrar tells them the holding no longer exists.

The shares are not lost. They are reclaimed by filing Form IEPF-5 online with the IEPF Authority, which generates an SRN for tracking. You then send the original indemnity bond, the acknowledgement and the form to the company's IEPF Nodal Officer at its registered office. The company verifies the claim and reports to the Authority, which releases the refund electronically. It is a longer process than an ordinary transmission and worth starting early if it applies.

You can check whether a holding has been transferred by searching the company's unclaimed-dividend records or asking its registrar directly.

Since 1 January 2026 there is a defined route for this, where before there was none. SEBI now formally treats a nominee as a trustee of the securities rather than their owner, and has set out how a nominee passes them on to the legal heirs.

The nominee first has the securities transmitted into their own account in the ordinary way. The onward transfer to the heirs is then made against the succession documents — a will, legal heir certificate, succession certificate or probate — and is reported to the tax authorities under a dedicated reason code, so that it is treated as a transmission and not as a sale by the nominee.

That last detail matters more than it sounds. Before this, a nominee who did the right thing and passed assets on to their siblings risked the transfer being read as a disposal. If you are in this position, tell the depository participant or registrar explicitly that this is a nominee-to-legal-heir transmission.

Transmission on death is not a sale. Succession, inheritance and devolution are expressly excluded from what counts as a "transfer" for capital gains, so no capital gains arise on the transmission itself — and India has no separate inheritance or estate tax, so receiving the shares is not taxable income either.

What the claimant inherits along with the shares is the previous owner's cost. Capital gains arise only when you eventually sell, and are computed against what the deceased paid, not the value on the date of death.

For genuinely old holdings there is an important relief: where the asset was acquired before 1 April 2001, the cost may be taken as the higher of the actual cost or the fair market value as on 1 April 2001. On a share bought in the 1980s that difference is usually very large, so do not sell a decades-old holding without working it out.

Stamp duty is charged on a market transfer, not on transmission, and securities moving between demat accounts do not attract it.