Nomination Rules

From 1 November 2025 you can name up to four nominees on a bank account. That change is useful, and it still does not settle who inherits.

How many nominees can you have, and on what?

The bank rows come from the Banking Laws (Amendment) Act, 2025. The nomination provisions in Sections 10 to 13 came into force on 1 November 2025.

What changed for bank accounts in November 2025?

Three things. You may now nominate up to four people instead of one. For a deposit account you can choose simultaneous or successive nomination. For a locker or safe custody article only successive nomination is allowed.

Simultaneous means all four are live at once. You state each nominee’s share as a percentage and the shares must total 100. The bank pays each of them their stated slice.

Successive means one at a time. The second nominee only becomes operative if the first has died. It is an ordered queue, not a split.

The Banking Companies (Nomination) Rules, 2025 will carry the forms and the procedure. Until your bank publishes its updated form, ask for the current one in writing rather than relying on a branch’s verbal position.

Why is a nominee not the same as an heir?

Because nomination is a discharge mechanism. It tells the institution who it may safely pay. It is designed to stop your money being frozen while a family argues.

Who ultimately keeps the money is decided elsewhere. Your will decides it if you left one. Succession law decides it if you did not. A nominee who is not an heir may be required to hand the money over.

This is why naming one child as nominee “for convenience” causes so much damage. The bank pays that child. The other heirs then have to litigate to get their share. Nomination has bought speed and created a lawsuit.

The fix is not clever nomination. It is a will. Our page on wills and succession explains what a valid one needs. And claiming a deceased relative’s assets covers what a family faces without one.

Where insurance is different

Section 39 of the Insurance Act, 1938 creates the beneficial nominee. Where the policyholder names a parent, spouse or child as nominee, that nominee is entitled to the proceeds beneficially. The money is theirs, not the estate’s.

This is a genuine legal difference and it is the strongest argument for naming the right person on a term policy. A spouse named as nominee on a term plan receives the payout in their own right.

Name the dependant who will actually need the money. Then tell them the policy exists. See term insurance and why claims get rejected.

The five-minute job worth doing this week

Most people have nominations that are blank, or twenty years out of date, or naming a parent who has since died. Every one of those turns into paperwork for a grieving family.

Go through the list. Savings accounts, fixed deposits, the locker, the demat account, every mutual fund folio, the EPF account, every insurance policy. Add or update a nominee on each.

Then write the list down and tell someone where it is. A nomination nobody knows about is only marginally better than no nomination. Keep it with your will.

Update it after a marriage, a birth, a divorce or a death. Nomination is not a one-time task. It is a maintenance task.