No More Letter of Confirmation: How Physical Shares Reach Your Demat Account From April 2026

For four years, getting duplicate shares or moving a deceased relative's physical shares into your name ended with a piece of paper called a Letter of Confirmation. You then had 120 days to take it to your depository participant and get the shares into a demat account. Plenty of people missed that deadline.

SEBI has removed the step. For requests made from 2 April 2026, the registrar credits the shares straight to your demat account.

What changed

Through a circular dated 30 January 2026, SEBI did away with the Letter of Confirmation for service requests on physical securities. The change took effect on 2 April 2026. Here is the route before and after:

Which requests are covered

• Duplicate share certificates: when the original certificates are lost, stolen or damaged
• Transmission: when shares pass to a nominee or legal heir after a death
• Transposition: changing the order of names on a joint holding
• Claims from a company's unclaimed suspense account
• Requests arising from corporate actions: on physical holdings

What you need to submit

Because the shares now go directly into your account, you need a demat account before you apply. Along with the form and supporting documents your request already needs, the registrar asks for:

• The service request form: Form ISR-4 for duplicates and most other requests. Transmission has its own forms since SEBI’s July 2026 framework — Annexure-3, or Annexure-2 for quick transmission — which replaced Form ISR-5.
• A Client Master List: the account statement from your depository participant, not more than two months old and attested by the participant
• A demat request form

The Client Master List is how the registrar confirms the account is yours. If the name on it doesn't match the name on the folio or your PAN, expect the request to come back, so check before you post anything.

How long it takes

The circular requires the securities to be credited to your account within 30 days of the request. Under the old route the letter of confirmation itself was issued within 30 days, and you then had up to 120 days to take it to your depository participant, so the full journey could run to five months. The word that matters now is "complete": the 30 days run from when the registrar has everything, so a missing attestation or an out-of-date Client Master List pushes it back.

If you had a Letter of Confirmation

Letters issued before 2 April 2026 stayed valid for 120 days from the date of issue, so the last of them expired at the end of July 2026.

An expired letter does not mean the shares are gone — your entitlement to them is unaffected. Write to the registrar, quoting the letter and the folio, and ask what has happened to the securities and what it now needs in order to credit them to your demat account.

What this makes out of date

A lot of what is written online about duplicate shares and transmission still describes the Letter of Confirmation route, and much of it also says every claim needs a police complaint and a newspaper advertisement. Those requirements have changed too. For the current process, see:

• Lost share certificates under SEBI's December 2025 rules
• Transmission of shares under SEBI's July 2026 framework
• What each ISR form is for

Before you apply

• Open a demat account in exactly the name shown on your PAN
• Update PAN, address and bank details on the folio with Form ISR-1 if any have changed
• Get a Client Master List attested by your depository participant, and send it within two months
• Keep copies of every certificate and form, and send the originals by a tracked service