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Sort a deceased person's accounts, mandates and policies into what freezes, what is still debiting and what must not be cancelled yet, then put the claims in order.
This page sorts a deceased person's accounts, mandates and policies into three groups that behave completely differently — what freezes the moment the bank records the death, what is still quietly debiting an account the family assumes is closed, and what must not be cancelled yet because stopping it costs more than leaving it running. It is built for the person holding the file in the weeks after a death in India, and it applies the rules that actually decide the answer: the RBI Master Circular on Customer Service in Banks for deceased-depositor claims, sections 45ZA, 45ZC and 45ZE of the Banking Regulation Act 1949 for nomination, RBI's locker circular of 18 August 2021, and SEBI's circular of 18 January 2022 which sets the simplified transmission limit at Rs 15,00,000 per demat account and Rs 5,00,000 per listed company for physical shares. The classification turns on one thing families consistently get wrong: survivorship, not nomination, is what keeps an account operable, and a nominee is a trustee for the heirs rather than an owner.
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A frozen account and a live mandate are two different problems, and the mandate is the expensive one — it keeps pulling money for weeks before anyone notices.
The EMI mandate, the premium auto-debit, the locker rent and the pension credit account each cost more to stop than to keep funded, and the page says why for each one.
SEBI's Rs 15,00,000 and Rs 5,00,000 limits are fixed nationally; the bank's simplified-settlement limit is fixed by its own Board, so the page takes that one as an input instead of inventing a figure.
Cancelling the discretionary mandates comes before the branch visits; the succession certificate comes last, because section 373 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925 requires notice and an objection period.
Only if there is no surviving holder with a right to operate it. A single-name account and an account operated jointly by all holders both freeze, because in each case the mandate needs a signature that can no longer be given. An either-or-survivor or former-or-survivor account does not freeze — the RBI Master Circular on Customer Service lets the bank pay the survivor without any succession document, at any value. Nomination does not keep an account operable; it only tells the bank whom it may pay after the account has frozen.
No, with one statutory exception. Section 45ZA(2) of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 says only that paying the nominee is a valid discharge of the bank's liability, and Ram Chander Talwar v. Devender Kumar Talwar, (2010) 10 SCC 671 confirmed the nominee does not become the owner — succession law decides entitlement, and the nominee holds the money for the heirs. The exception is section 39(7) of the Insurance Act, 1938, inserted by the Insurance Laws (Amendment) Act, 2015: where the nominee under a life policy is a parent, spouse or child of the policyholder, that nominee is beneficially entitled to the claim amount.
No. A NACH, ECS or UPI Autopay mandate is live until it is revoked, and nothing about a death revokes it. On an account with survivorship the debits keep succeeding and the money leaves; on a frozen account each presentation dishonours, which section 25 of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007 treats the same way as a bounced cheque under section 138 of the Negotiable Instruments Act, 1881. The EMI mandate is the one not to cancel — a missed instalment is a default, and RBI's circular of 18 August 2023 on penal charges applies from the first one.
The whole balance where there is a survivor or a registered nominee, at any value. Where there is neither, RBI's simplified procedure applies up to a threshold fixed by each bank's own Board — RBI does not set a national rupee figure, so ask the branch in writing. Above that threshold the bank asks for a succession certificate under sections 370 to 390 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, or probate or letters of administration. For securities the limits are national: SEBI's circular of 18 January 2022 sets Rs 15,00,000 per demat account and Rs 5,00,000 per listed company for physical certificates.