One Afternoon, Every Nominee: How to Update Nominations on Everything You Own

Nearly every rupee of the lakhs of crores lying unclaimed in India got there the same way: an account with no nominee, held by someone whose family did not know it existed. Both halves of that failure are fixable, and the first half takes one honest afternoon.

This is the guide for that afternoon. Every major asset, exactly where the nomination lives, and how to set it right. Do it for yourself, then sit with your parents and do it for them, because it is their accounts where the gaps usually are.

First, the two rules that make this worth your time:

1. A nominee is the person institutions can hand things to without a court process. No nominee means your family faces claim forms, indemnity bonds, heir certificates and months of delay for every single asset. A nominee turns most of that into one visit. (A nominee is usually a trustee for the legal heirs, not the final owner; our nominee versus Will guide explains that cleanly.)
2. The rules recently got better. Banking law changes now allow up to four nominees on bank deposits, and SEBI’s 2025 framework allows up to ten nominees with percentage shares on mutual funds and demat accounts. If you set nominations years ago, they are worth revisiting, not just checking.

Bank accounts and fixed deposits

• Where: your branch, or netbanking and the bank’s app (most large banks have Nomination under service requests or profile settings).
• How: the deposit nomination form (banks know it as DA-1; DA-2 cancels and DA-3 changes one). Online, it is a two-minute form with an OTP.
• Know: nomination covers each account or deposit separately; check savings, FDs and RDs individually. With the new rules, ask your bank about registering multiple nominees. The passbook or statement usually prints “Nomination Registered” once done; insist on seeing it.

EPF and EPS (your provident fund and pension)

• Where: the EPFO Member portal, under Manage, then E-nomination. Entirely online.
• How: add your family members with Aadhaar, date of birth and bank details, set the percentage share for the PF amount, and e-sign with an Aadhaar OTP. The same flow covers the EPS pension nomination.
• Know: e-nomination is what makes a death claim filable online by your family instead of a physical file at an EPFO office; it is the difference between weeks and months. Old paper nominations from previous jobs do not carry forward reliably; redo it once on the portal and it stands.

Mutual funds

• Where: MF Central, your fund house’s site, or the registrar (CAMS or KFin), all online with an OTP.
• How: SEBI now requires every folio to record a choice: nominate, or explicitly opt out. You can name up to ten nominees with percentage splits.
• Know: folios without a recorded choice face freezes on transactions, so this one is not optional anyway. While there, update your mobile and email on old folios; dead contact details are how folios go dark.

Demat accounts and shares

• Where: your broker’s app or site (nomination section), backed by the depositories.
• How: the same 2025 framework applies: up to ten nominees, percentages allowed, online with OTP or e-sign.
• Know: if you still hold physical share certificates from an older era, nomination alone does not modernise them. Dematerialise them now; it is exactly these holdings that end up in the IEPF a decade later.

Life insurance

• Where: the insurer’s branch or online policy-service portal (LIC accepts nomination changes at any branch with a simple endorsement form).
• How: submit the change-of-nomination form with the policy number; the insurer endorses the policy. Free, and you can do it any number of times.
• Know: naming your spouse, children or parents makes them beneficial nominees under insurance law, which gives them a stronger claim to the money itself, not just the receipt of it. If your policy still names a parent from before your marriage, this afternoon is when that gets fixed.

PPF, post office savings, NSC

• Where: the bank branch or post office holding the account.
• How: the nomination form for the specific scheme; one or more nominees with shares are allowed on PPF.
• Know: these are the accounts most often opened decades ago and least often revisited. If the passbook was issued before your children existed, assume the nomination needs work.

Bank lockers

• Where: the branch that holds the locker.
• How: a locker nomination form; joint lockers have survivor rules too.
• Know: without nomination, opening a deceased person’s locker involves inventories, witnesses and paperwork at the worst possible time. With it, access is straightforward.

Property and housing society shares

• Where: your co-operative housing society (a nomination form for the share certificate); and for everything beyond that, a Will.
• Know: society nomination only decides who the society records; it does not decide who inherits the property. Succession law or a Will does that. Treat property nomination as a convenience, and a simple registered Will as the real instrument.

The five habits that keep this fixed

1. Percentages, in writing. With multiple nominees, set explicit shares; “equally” left unsaid becomes a dispute.
2. Guardians for minors. Naming a child as nominee without appointing a guardian in the form creates a payout problem; every form has the guardian field, use it.
3. Re-check after every life event. Marriage, a birth, a death, a divorce. Nominations do not update themselves, and insurance nominations can even lapse on events like marriage in some cases.
4. Tell the nominee. A nomination nobody knows about still becomes unclaimed money. The point is not the form; it is that your family knows.
5. Write down where everything is. The afternoon’s real output is the list: every account, every nominee, every location. That list is what your family will actually use.

The checklist to save

• Banks: nomination on every savings account, FD and RD, and ask about multiple nominees.
• EPFO: e-nomination completed on the member portal, e-signed.
• Mutual funds: nomination choice recorded on every folio, contacts updated.
• Demat: nominees with percentages; old paper shares dematerialised.
• Insurance: every policy’s nominee current, beneficial nominees where it matters.
• PPF and post office: forms filed at the holding branch.
• Locker: nomination registered.
• Society: share certificate nomination done, and a simple Will for the property itself.
• The family told, and the list written down.

That last line is where Parampara comes in: a private, encrypted vault built exactly for that list, so the afternoon’s work outlives the afternoon. Your family will not need to remember what you did today; they will just open the vault and see it.