Unclaimed Reliance Dividends: How to Check a Folio and Claim Before the Shares Move to the IEPF

Reliance Industries has paid a dividend every year for a long time. On a folio that still carries an address from the 1990s, or a bank account closed years ago, every one of those dividends has gone unpaid.

That matters for more than the money. Under section 124(6) of the Companies Act, once the dividend on a shareholding has gone unclaimed for seven consecutive years, the company must transfer the shares themselves to the Investor Education and Protection Fund. With Reliance, where an old holding may have multiplied many times through bonuses, that can be a very large number of shares.

What Reliance says about it

Reliance transfers shares every year as each year’s dividend crosses the seven-year line. Its shareholder referencer asks shareholders to claim unpaid dividends for 2018-19 and later years through its registrar, KFin Technologies (KFintech), so that the shares are not transferred.

The process each year follows a pattern. In 2024, for example, Reliance wrote individually to affected shareholders on 21 May, published a notice dated 24 May, and said that shares would be transferred if it heard nothing by 26 August 2024. Reports at the time said shares linked to dividends for 2015-16 and earlier had already been transferred.

How to check a Reliance folio

• On Reliance’s investor website. Its shareholder services section lets you search by folio number, or by DP ID and client ID for demat holdings, and shows unclaimed dividends, shares liable to be transferred, and shares already transferred.
• With KFintech. Write to the registrar quoting the folio number and the holder’s name. KFintech handles Reliance shareholder queries on rilinvestor@kfintech.com. Dealing with KFintech.
• Without a folio number. Start from the name and PAN of the person who held the shares. How to search by PAN.

Claiming before the shares move

For a physical folio, unpaid dividends are paid only once the folio’s KYC is complete — SEBI’s rules require dividends on physical holdings to be paid electronically to a verified bank account. In practice that means sending KFintech:

• Form ISR-1 with PAN, contact details and bank details, and a cancelled cheque bearing the holder’s name
• Form ISR-2 if the signature on record needs to be confirmed by the bank
• a nomination form, or a formal opt-out

What each ISR form is for, and how to update KYC on physical shares.

Once the folio is updated, the unpaid dividends are paid and the shares come off the transfer list. Then put the holding into demat, so the next bonus is credited directly and nothing drifts again. Converting physical shares to demat.

If the shares have already moved

Then the claim goes to the IEPF Authority on Form IEPF-5, with Reliance verifying it. It takes longer and needs more paperwork, but the shares — and the dividends that went with them — are recoverable. How an IEPF claim works, and how long it realistically takes.

If the shareholder has died

The heirs cannot claim dividends in the deceased’s name. The shares first have to be transmitted to the legal heirs or the surviving joint holder, and the claim made in the new holder’s name. IEPF claims when the shareholder has died.

Check the whole entitlement, not just the dividends

An old Reliance folio usually carries more than its dividends: the 2017 and 2024 bonus shares, Jio Financial Services shares from 2023, and for holdings from before 2006, shares in the demerged companies. What an old Reliance holding may have become.

Or send us the holder’s name and any certificate you have. We will check the folio, tell you what is still with Reliance and what has gone to the IEPF, and what it will take to recover each. Free unclaimed share search.

Sources: Reliance Industries shareholders’ referencer; 2024 notice as reported by DNA and Goodreturns.