There is no single search. You go insurer by insurer
Set expectations here, because this is where people give up. Every insurer must publish a searchable database of unclaimed amounts on its own website, covering anything of Rs 1,000 or more. There is no central search across all of them.
The regulator's Bima Bharosa portal is often described as one. It is not: it is a page of links to each insurer's own database. IRDAI has proposed building a genuinely centralised portal, which tells you plainly that one does not exist yet. So if you do not know which company held the policy, the job is working through the insurers one at a time, starting with whoever the family is likeliest to have used.
To match a record you need any two of the policy number, the policyholder's PAN, their name, or their date of birth. A policy number on its own will not do it.
One quirk worth knowing: the databases are refreshed only twice a year, as at 31 March and 30 September, so something recently unclaimed may not show yet. Entries stay visible even after the ten-year transfer to the Fund.
Twelve months makes it unclaimed. Ten years moves it
Two clocks run, and they do different things.
The first is short. An amount becomes an unclaimed amount once it is payable and has stayed unpaid for twelve months past its due date because the insurer could not contact anyone. That last part matters: a claim that is merely being investigated or disputed is not unclaimed and will not appear on the published list.
The second is the one that moves the money. Where an amount has been unclaimed for more than ten years, measured each year at 30 September, the insurer transfers it to the Senior Citizens' Welfare Fund by the following 1 March. At that point the insurer no longer holds it, though the insurer is still where a claim starts.
The twenty-five year deadline, and what else it catches
Once an amount reaches the Senior Citizens' Welfare Fund, the policyholder or nominee has twenty-five years to claim it, running from the date it was credited to the Fund. After that it escheats to the Central Government under Section 126 of the Finance Act 2015.
The important thing is that this is not an insurance rule. The same Fund takes unclaimed balances from Public Provident Fund accounts, Employees' Provident Fund accounts, and post-office savings including NSC, KVP, the Senior Citizens' Savings Scheme and Sukanya Samriddhi. Every one of them runs the same clock to the same escheat. A family chasing a forgotten PPF or EPF balance is on this deadline too.
| Asset | Where it goes | Deadline to claim |
|---|---|---|
| Bank deposits | RBI's DEA Fund after 10 years | none |
| Company shares | IEPF, after 7 years of unpaid dividend | none |
| Insurance, PPF, EPF, small savings | SCWF after 10 years | 25 years from credit |
So the reassurance that applies to a dormant bank account or shares in the IEPF, that the claim never expires, does not carry across to anything in the SCWF.
On timing, do not panic. The Fund only came into existence in 2016, and legacy balances were transferred in the year after, so the earliest possible escheat is around 2041. Even a policy that matured in the 1990s has most of its twenty-five years left. And escheat is not quite absolute: the section preserves a court's power to order otherwise, and lets the Central Government refund a late claim where it is satisfied there were genuine reasons for the delay.
What an NRI runs into that a resident does not
Finding the money is the easy half. Collecting it from abroad is slower, though less hopeless than insurers sometimes make it feel.
Which account it lands in follows the premium, not your passport. This is the fact most people get backwards, including most guidance. Where the claim or maturity is settled in foreign currency, because the premium was paid in foreign currency, the proceeds may be credited to an NRE or FCNR account and stay freely repatriable. It is only where premiums were paid in non-repatriable rupees that the payout goes to an NRO account, with the annual limit and the remittance paperwork that follow. Establish which one you are in before nominating an account, because the wrong answer costs you repatriability.
Insurers commonly want the original policy bond, which for an old policy is usually in a file in India. Where it is lost they will ask for an indemnity in its place. Some insurers also run a press-notice step, though that belongs to issuing a duplicate policy rather than to settling a claim.
Identity and address proof executed abroad generally has to be attested, through an Indian consulate or a notary.
And know your lever. The rules say plainly that no claim shall be rejected or closed for want of documents, and that where settlement runs late the insurer owes interest at bank rate plus 2 percent, payable on its own initiative rather than on request.
Once the money is released, the separate question is what India taxes on it and what the insurer withheld, which turns on whether the policy meets the Section 10(10D) conditions. That is worked through on tax and TDS on a life insurance maturity payout for an NRI.
If the policyholder has died
Where the policyholder is dead, the claim is a death claim rather than a maturity claim, and who may make it depends on the nomination.
A registered nominee claims directly. Where there is no nomination, or the nominee has also died, the insurer falls back on proof of entitlement, which is where a legal heirship certificate or a succession route comes in, and that is set out on the succession and legal heir page.
If you are not sure what the deceased held at all, start with the wider sweep on the estate discovery page rather than guessing at insurers one at a time.