consolidated account statement meaning

A Consolidated Account Statement, or CAS, is a single statement issued by the depositories — CDSL and NSDL — listing every demat holding and every mutual fund folio linked to your PAN, across all brokers and fund houses. Because it is keyed to the PAN rather than to any one intermediary, it surfaces accounts you no longer use and holdings you have entirely forgotten about.

how do I find mutual funds I have forgotten about

Ask the registrars for a consolidated statement — CAMS and KFintech each issue one against your PAN and registered email, covering folios across every fund house they service. The depository CAS from CDSL or NSDL covers the same ground for units held in demat form. Between the two, folios opened through a distributor years ago, including funds since merged into others, usually reappear.

dividends and shares that stay unclaimed for seven years are transferred to

The Investor Education and Protection Fund, the IEPF, administered by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Dividends unclaimed for seven consecutive years move there along with the underlying shares, most often because the bank account or address on the company’s register went stale. The money is not gone — it is recoverable through a formal claim to the IEPF Authority, which is a great deal slower than simply keeping your details current.

how often is the cas sent by cdsl and nsdl

Monthly for any month in which there was a transaction in the account, and otherwise on a half-yearly basis, sent to the email address registered with the depository. You need not wait for it either: both CDSL and NSDL allow a statement to be requested on demand through their websites, and the mutual fund registrars do the same.

do I need a separate nomination for every demat account and mutual fund folio

Yes — nominations are recorded per account and per folio, not per person. A nomination on your main demat account says nothing about a fund folio opened elsewhere in 2016, or about an old account with a broker you stopped using, which is why most of the tidy-up after pulling a CAS turns out to be a nomination exercise.

Consolidated Account Statement (CAS)

A surprising number of otherwise organised people cannot say, without checking four apps, what they own. Shares from a job ten years ago, a fund a relative recommended, an insurance policy paid by standing instruction, an EPF account from a company that no longer exists. None of it is lost. It is simply not in one place.

Think of it like this

The drawer everyone has

Every household has a drawer with warranty cards, spare keys and documents nobody has read in years. Nothing in it is missing; it has just never been listed, so nobody knows what is there until something goes wrong.

In the market

Your holdings are that drawer. The consolidated statement is the list — and it takes one evening to produce, after which you will almost certainly find something you had forgotten.

The four documents that cover almost everything

Document	What it shows	Where it comes from
CAS (CDSL / NSDL)	Every share, bond and demat holding, plus mutual funds mapped to your PAN	Emailed monthly if there was a transaction, else half-yearly; also on request
AMFI / RTA statement	Mutual funds held by PAN across all fund houses, including old folios	CAMS and KFintech both issue one against your email and PAN
EPFO passbook	Every provident fund account against your UAN, including old employers	The EPFO member portal, after activating the UAN
Insurance repository	Life and health policies held in electronic form	NSDL, CDSL, CAMS and Karvy operate approved repositories

What people find

Shares from an old employer's ESOP that were never sold and never tracked, often after several corporate actions.
Physical share certificates from a parent or grandparent. These can no longer be traded and must be dematerialised — a slow process worth starting before it is urgent.
Mutual fund folios opened through a distributor, still in a regular plan paying trail commission, sometimes for a fund that merged into another years ago.
Multiple EPF accounts from three employers, none of them transferred, one of them stopped earning interest after three inactive years.
Dividends never credited, because the bank account on file was closed. After seven years these move to the Investor Education and Protection Fund and recovering them becomes a formal claim.

What to do once you have the list

The tidy-up

1
Consolidate the dormant accounts
Close demat accounts you do not use — each may carry an annual maintenance charge. Transfer old EPF balances into the current one through the UAN portal.
2
Update the bank details and address everywhere
This is what stops dividends and redemptions going astray. One change of address, propagated properly, prevents most unclaimed-asset stories.
3
Add or correct the nomination on every holding
Nominations are per account and per folio, not per person. A nomination on your main demat says nothing about the fund folio you opened in 2016.
4
Switch regular plans to direct
If you are not receiving advice you value, a regular plan is paying a trail commission for nothing. Switching is a redemption for tax purposes, so check the gain before doing it in bulk.
5
Write the one page
What exists, where, and who to contact. Kept somewhere your family can find it. This is the part that actually matters.

Check yourself

You have used three brokers over twelve years and cannot remember what is in the first two. What single document is most likely to show everything?

Simple bhasha mein

Ghar ki woh daraz

Har ghar mein ek daraz hoti hai — warranty cards, purani chaabiyaan, kaagaz jo kisi ne saalon se nahi dekhe. Kuch gum nahi hua, bas list kabhi bani hi nahi. CAS wahi list hai, aur PAN se juda hota hai broker se nahi — ek shaam lagti hai, aur aksar kuch bhoola hua nikal aata hai.

What to remember

The CAS is keyed to your PAN, so it finds accounts you no longer use.
CAMS and KFintech statements cover mutual fund folios across all fund houses.
Old EPF accounts stop earning interest after three inactive years — transfer them.
Unclaimed dividends move to the IEPF after seven years and become a formal claim.
Nominations are per account and per folio; one is not all of them.

You reached the endMark it done and keep your streak going.

Up nextAnnuities, NPS at sixty, and turning a corpus into an income Previous: Reading your salary slip: CTC, EPF and what actually arrives

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Common questions

Short, direct answers to what people ask about this topic.

consolidated account statement meaning: A Consolidated Account Statement, or CAS, is a single statement issued by the depositories — CDSL and NSDL — listing every demat holding and every mutual fund folio linked to your PAN, across all brokers and fund houses. Because it is keyed to the PAN rather than to any one intermediary, it surfaces accounts you no longer use and holdings you have entirely forgotten about.
how do I find mutual funds I have forgotten about: Ask the registrars for a consolidated statement — CAMS and KFintech each issue one against your PAN and registered email, covering folios across every fund house they service. The depository CAS from CDSL or NSDL covers the same ground for units held in demat form. Between the two, folios opened through a distributor years ago, including funds since merged into others, usually reappear.
dividends and shares that stay unclaimed for seven years are transferred to: The Investor Education and Protection Fund, the IEPF, administered by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Dividends unclaimed for seven consecutive years move there along with the underlying shares, most often because the bank account or address on the company’s register went stale. The money is not gone — it is recoverable through a formal claim to the IEPF Authority, which is a great deal slower than simply keeping your details current.
how often is the cas sent by cdsl and nsdl: Monthly for any month in which there was a transaction in the account, and otherwise on a half-yearly basis, sent to the email address registered with the depository. You need not wait for it either: both CDSL and NSDL allow a statement to be requested on demand through their websites, and the mutual fund registrars do the same.
do I need a separate nomination for every demat account and mutual fund folio: Yes — nominations are recorded per account and per folio, not per person. A nomination on your main demat account says nothing about a fund folio opened elsewhere in 2016, or about an old account with a broker you stopped using, which is why most of the tidy-up after pulling a CAS turns out to be a nomination exercise.