The Investor Education and Protection Fund Authority (IEPFA) plans to, in the next three months, come out with a mobile App to enable citizens file IEPF claims from their phones, said a top Corporate Affairs Ministry (MCA) official.

The National Institute of Smart Governance has been tasked to build this mobile application, Rajesh Verma, Secretary, MCA, told an ICSI organised webinar on Investor Education & Awareness.

IEPFA, which became functional in 2016, settled 14,000 claims in the last three years and refunded 72 lakh shares having market value of more than ₹450 crore, Verma said.

IEPFA has during the lockdown continued to settle claims and transferred dividends and shares to the claimants, he added.

As per the Companies Act 2013, the underlying shares, dividends for which have been unclaimed for a consecutive period of seven years has to be transferred to IEPF.

IEPFA was set up under Companies Act 2013 to promote investor education, protection and awareness, besides transfer of unclaimed dividends and their underlying shares.

Verma highlighted that Monday also coincided with substantive provision of Investor Education & Protection Authority coming into force under the Companies Act 2013.

He said that in the recent days the refund claim process has moved online.

“In its endeavour towards prompt service delivery, IEPFA will focus on effective and timely grievance redressal mechanism along with strong and effective outreach programme. This will help us create a robust ecosystem for investor education and awareness”, said Verma, who is also the Chairman of IEPFA.

KP Krishnan, IEPFA Research Chair at NCAER and former Skills Ministry Secretary, said there is need to reorient statutory regulatory authorities as the incentive of the employees of these authorities are not aligned to consumer protection.

He also called for greater amount of resources to be earmarked within the regulatory authorities for consumer protection activities. “ In most regulatory authorities consumer protection does not get the kind of resources and attention that is needed,” Krishnan said.

Keeping in mind the sensitivities of these regulatory authorities, IEPFA is well placed to stimulate and encourage intellectual work, he added.

“IEPFA should become a storehouse and repository of the best database on Indian consumers investing in financial products. It has to be continuous work—intellectual and empirical work backed by data on investor protection is what we need to do”, Krishnan said.