The Stock Market's Ghost Assets

SEBI's Investor Education and Protection Fund holds shares worth thousands of crores that have gone unclaimed. These are not penny stocks. They include blue-chip holdings in companies like Reliance, TCS, and HDFC that families simply never knew their relative owned.

The demat system was supposed to make share ownership transparent. Instead, it created a digital layer that is invisible to families who do not know to look. A father's trading account at a broker the family has never heard of. Mutual fund SIPs running on auto-debit from an account the family closes after death. ETF holdings in a demat account with a different DP than the primary one.

Claiming these assets after death requires the legal heir to first discover they exist, then navigate the transmission process with each depository participant separately. Without a will naming these assets, the process requires succession certificates for each holding.

The fix is simple: document every demat account, trading account, and mutual fund folio in one place. Include broker names, DP IDs, and login details. Update nominees on each account. Share the master list with your family.

Sort My Legacy covers investments, stocks, mutual funds, and demat accounts as separate trackable categories. Your family gets a complete financial picture, not ghost assets waiting to be discovered.