• The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has partnered with DigiLocker to reduce unclaimed assets in the Indian securities market and enhance investor protection.

• The initiative will help investors store and access information on their demat and mutual fund holdings through DigiLocker benefiting investors and their families.

Highlights of the initiative:

• DigiLocker users can now fetch and store their statement of holdings for shares and mutual fund units from their demat accounts, along with their Consolidated Account Statement (CAS).

• This expands the existing DigiLocker services, which already include bank account statements, insurance policy certificates, and NPS account statements.

• Further, users can add nominees to their DigiLocker accounts, allowing them access to the user’s documents after their demise. This helps family members or legal heirs manage the deceased’s financial assets more easily.

• Also, the DigiLocker system can update the status of a user’s account upon their demise using information from death certificates or details provided by KYC Registration Agencies (KRAs).

• After the user’s death, DigiLocker automatically notifies the nominated individuals (DigiLocker Nominees) via SMS and email, helping them manage the deceased’s assets. This access is expected to facilitate the initiation of the transmission process with the relevant financial institutions.

• SEBI aims to reduce unclaimed assets in the securities market by addressing issues such as dormant accounts, lack of contact or bank details, and simplifying transmission norms.

What is DigiLocker?

• DigiLocker is an initiative of Ministry of Electronics & IT (MeitY) under Digital India programme.

• DigiLocker ties into Digital India’s vision of providing citizens a secure document access platform on a public cloud.

• It aims at ‘digital empowerment’ of citizens by providing access to authentic digital documents to citizen’s digital document wallet. 

• The documents include aadhaar, PAN, driving licence, birth and death certificates, bank account statement, insurance policy, and statement of New Pension Scheme. The issued documents in DigiLocker system are deemed to be at par with original documents

• Targeted at the idea of paperless governance, DigiLocker is a platform for issuance and verification of documents & certificates in a digital way, thus eliminating the use of physical documents. 

• The issued documents in DigiLocker system are deemed to be at par with original physical documents as per Rule 9A of the Information Technology (Preservation and Retention of Information by Intermediaries providing Digital Locker facilities) Rules, 2016.

• With over 43 crore registered users, DigiLocker has now reached 31 per cent of the total population.

Manorama Yearbook app is now available on Google Play Store and iOS App Store