If you invested in stocks and forgot about them, it might be time to check with your company. According to the Royal Securities Exchange of Bhutan (RSEBL), unclaimed dividends worth Nu 60M remain with publicly listed companies.
Among the 18 listed companies on the Bhutanese stock exchange, 15 have declared dividends, amounting to nearly Nu 17bn so far.
However, almost one per cent of this dividend remains unclaimed.
Bhutan Insurance Limited and Druk PNB Bank lead with the highest unclaimed dividends, each holding Nu 16 M in uncollected funds.
This is happening mainly due to low financial literacy among shareholders, according to RSEBL officials.
They said many investors fail to attend Annual General Meetings or keep track of their investment portfolios.
Outdated shareholder information, such as citizenship identity card numbers, phone numbers, and bank account details, has made it difficult for companies to make the dividend payments.
To address this, RSEBL updated shareholder records last year, improving the information of 93,000 out of 100,000 shareholders in the country.
Following this, six companies experienced a decrease in unclaimed dividends from Nu 32 M to 23 M after processing payouts. RSEBL stated that it plans to update the information of the remaining 7,000 shareholders.
This January, RSEBL introduced an “Investor Protection Fund” to manage unclaimed dividends. Under this initiative, RSEBL will invest unclaimed dividends in promoting the stock market and creating awareness of financial literacy following approval from the Primary Market Regulatory Committee.
However, this initiative does not prevent shareholders from claiming their dividends at any time.
Until now, companies have retained unclaimed dividends as liabilities, meaning treating them as money they owe to shareholders until it is claimed and were not permitted to use them for other purposes.
Kinley Bidha
Edited by Sangay Chezom
