The “I’ll Do It Later” Audit: 15 Minutes That Could Save Your Family Lakhs
You’ve been meaning to do this for months.
Update your nominees. Check if your EPF nomination is still valid. Tell your spouse where the important stuff is. Maybe even write a will.
Every time, the same thought: “I’ll do it this weekend.” Then the weekend comes, and there’s a trip to plan, a deadline at work, a Netflix series to finish. It never feels urgent enough.
Here’s the thing. It won’t feel urgent until it’s too late. And by then, someone you love will be dealing with frozen bank accounts, rejected claims, and lawyers, all because of things you could have sorted in 15 minutes on a Saturday morning.
So let’s do it right now. Open a new tab on your phone. Set a timer for 15 minutes. We’ll go section by section, and by the time your timer goes off, the most dangerous gaps in your financial life will be closed.
Ready? Start the timer.
Minutes 1-3: Check Your Demat Account Nominees
This is the fastest win. If you invest in stocks or mutual funds through a demat account, your nominee is the person who can claim those assets without going to court.
About 72% of demat account holders in India haven’t appointed a nominee, according to SEBI data. If you’re one of them, your family would need a succession certificate just to access your investments. That means 3 to 6 months in court and fees worth 2 to 5% of the estate value. On a Rs 20 lakh portfolio, that’s Rs 40,000 to Rs 1 lakh gone, just in court costs.
Here’s where to check, depending on your platform:
Zerodha:
- Go to console.zerodha.com
- Click Account in the top menu
- Click Nominees
- You’ll see your current nominees (or a blank page, which means you have none)
Groww:
- Open the Groww app or website
- Go to Profile > Account Details > Nominee Details
- Check if a nominee is listed and if the details are current
What to check:
- Is a nominee listed at all?
- Is the nominee still the right person? (If you listed a parent before marriage and now have a spouse, you might want to update this.)
- SEBI currently allows up to 3 nominees per demat account. You can split the percentage among them.
If your nominee is missing or outdated: Update it right now. Most platforms let you do it online with Aadhaar OTP verification. It takes under 2 minutes.
Understanding the difference between a nominee and a legal heir matters here. A nominee is a custodian, not automatically the owner. But having one in place means your family avoids the worst of the paperwork.
Minutes 4-7: Check Your Bank Account Nominees
This one has changed recently, so even if you set a nominee years ago, it’s worth checking.
The Banking Laws Amendment Act 2025 (which received presidential assent on April 15, 2025) now allows up to 4 nominees per bank account. The old rule allowed only 1. Banks must implement this by March 31, 2026, so most major banks should support multiple nominees by now or very soon.
Here’s why this matters so much.
With a nominee: When an account holder dies, the bank releases funds on submission of a death certificate and the nominee’s ID proof. That’s it. Clean, simple, fast.
Without a nominee: The family needs either a succession certificate or a legal heir certificate, plus an indemnity bond. This process takes months, sometimes longer, and costs real money. Banks are cautious. They don’t want to release funds to the wrong person. So they make families jump through hoops.
And the scale of this problem is staggering. As of March 2024, the RBI reported Rs 78,213 crore in unclaimed deposits sitting in Indian banks. That’s money belonging to people who died, moved, or simply forgot about accounts, and nobody has come to claim it.
What to do right now:
- Log in to your primary bank’s net banking or app
- Navigate to your profile or account settings
- Look for “Nominee” or “Nomination details”
- Check: Is someone listed? Is it the right person?
If you have accounts at multiple banks, check each one. Many people have a salary account, a savings account they opened in college, maybe a joint account with a parent. Each one needs a nominee.
Bonus: If you suspect a deceased family member might have had accounts you don’t know about, the RBI’s UDGAM portal at udgam.rbi.org.in lets you search for unclaimed deposits across multiple banks. It’s worth a quick search.
For a deeper guide on how to update your nominees across all financial accounts, we’ve written a step-by-step walkthrough.
Minutes 8-12: Check Your EPF, PPF, and NPS Nominations
This section is especially important if you’ve gotten married since you started working. Read this carefully.
Your EPF nomination made before marriage is automatically invalid after you get married.
This isn’t a suggestion or a best practice. It’s the law. Para 61 of the EPF Scheme, 1952, states that any nomination made before marriage is automatically treated as invalid once you marry. If you nominated your parents when you joined your first job at 22 and got married at 28, that nomination has been void for years.
The same rule applies to PPF. Nominations made before marriage are void. You need to file a fresh Form F with your bank or post office.
And NPS follows the same pattern. Pre-marriage nominations become invalid after marriage. NPS allows a maximum of 3 nominees.
What happens if you have no valid nomination? Your family still gets the money. EPF, PPF, and NPS don’t just disappear. But the process becomes significantly slower and more painful. Instead of a straightforward claim, your family will need additional legal documents, verification, and time.
If you want to understand the full EPF claim process after death, including timelines and required documents, we’ve covered that in detail.
How to update your EPF nomination right now:
- Go to the EPFO Member Portal (member.epfindia.gov.in)
- Log in with your UAN and password
- Navigate to Manage > e-Nomination
- Complete the nomination using Aadhaar OTP verification
- Add your spouse and/or children as nominees
This is purely online. No paperwork. No HR involvement. Just you, your phone, and 3 minutes.
For PPF: Contact your bank branch or post office where the account is held. You’ll need to submit Form F (nomination form). Some banks allow this through net banking now.
For NPS: Log in to the CRA portal (cra-nsdl.com) or your NPS app. Update nominations under the “Transaction” section.
The key takeaway: If you got married after opening any of these accounts, your nominations are almost certainly invalid. Fix this today. It’s the single highest-impact thing on this list.
Minutes 13-15: The 2-Minute Share
You’ve spent 12 minutes checking and updating nominees. That’s the defensive work done. Now for the one action that ties everything together.
Write down a list of everything you have. Not the passwords. Not the PINs. Just the existence of each account:
- Bank accounts (which banks, what type)
- Insurance policies (term, health, vehicle, which companies)
- Demat accounts (which platforms)
- EPF, PPF, NPS
- FDs, RDs, bonds
- Property documents (where they’re stored)
- Any loans or liabilities
This doesn’t need to be fancy. A note in your phone, a Google Doc, a sheet of paper in an envelope. What matters is that it exists and that one person knows where to find it.
Now tell that person. Your spouse, your sibling, your parent, whoever would need this information if something happened to you. Send them a message right now: “I’ve made a list of all our financial accounts. It’s in [location]. If you ever need it, that’s where to look.”
That single message might be the most valuable thing you do today. Because when families lose someone, the hardest part isn’t the paperwork. It’s not knowing what exists in the first place. We’ve written about how to make sure your family knows where everything is, and it starts with exactly this step.
Two more things while you’re at it:
Google Inactive Account Manager: Go to your Google Account settings and set up Inactive Account Manager. You choose trusted contacts who get notified after a period of inactivity that you configure (3, 6, 12, or 18 months of no login). They can receive your data or be notified to take action. If your Gmail holds important financial emails, this matters.
Apple Digital Legacy: If you use an iPhone, go to Settings > [Your Name] > Sign-In & Security > Legacy Contact. Add someone you trust. This gives them a way to access your Apple account data after your death, with proper verification through Apple.
For a complete guide to handling digital accounts when you’re gone, including social media, email, and cloud storage, we’ve covered all of it.
Timer’s Up. Here’s What You Just Avoided.
If you actually did the audit above, you’ve closed gaps that cost Indian families crores every year. Here’s what the “I’ll do it later” crowd is collectively sitting on:
Rs 78,213 crore in unclaimed bank deposits (RBI, March 2024). Money sitting in banks because nobody came to claim it, often because nobody knew it existed.
Over Rs 1 lakh crore in unclaimed shares and dividends transferred to the Investor Education and Protection Fund (IEPF). Investments that families couldn’t access because nominations were missing or outdated.
Only about 20% of Indians have a legally valid will. The rest leave their families to navigate succession laws, court procedures, and family disputes.
Succession certificates take a minimum of 3 to 6 months and cost 2 to 5% of the estate value in court fees and legal expenses. For a Rs 50 lakh estate, that’s Rs 1 to 2.5 lakhs. For larger estates, the numbers get much worse.
Every one of these situations starts the same way. Someone meant to sort things out. They didn’t get around to it. Something happened.
You just got around to it. In 15 minutes.
There’s One More Thing You Can Do
The audit you just completed handles the immediate dangers: missing nominees, outdated nominations, and making sure someone knows what you have.
But there’s a difference between “my family can eventually access things” and “my family has a clear, organized, secure record of everything they’d need.”
That’s what Anshin does.
Anshin lets you store all your financial details in one secure place and share them with people you trust, on your terms. Not the passwords, not the money itself, just the information your family would need to know where to look and what to claim.
You add your accounts, policies, and investments. You choose your trusted contacts. If something happens to you, they get access to the information they need, with built-in verification to make sure it’s only shared when it should be.
The 15-minute audit you just did is a strong start. Anshin makes sure you never have to do it again, because everything stays updated, organized, and accessible to the right people.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only. It does not constitute legal, financial, or tax advice and should not be treated as a substitute for professional consultation. Laws, regulations, and procedures mentioned (including the Banking Laws Amendment Act 2025, SEBI nominee rules, EPF Scheme 1952, and RBI guidelines) are subject to change. Specific processes may vary by institution, state, and individual circumstances. Statistics cited are based on publicly available data and may have been updated since publication. We recommend verifying current rules directly with the relevant institutions (SEBI, RBI, EPFO, your bank, or your broker) and consulting a qualified legal or financial professional for advice tailored to your situation. Anshin is a financial information organization tool and does not provide financial planning, legal, or investment advisory services.