Pursuance to Section 92 of the Banks and Specialized Deposit-taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930), the Bank of Ghana (BoG), in February 2021, issued an Unclaimed Balances and Dormant Accounts Directives to all Regulated Financial Institutions.
The Section 143 of Act 930 classifies dormant account as one with a time deposit account with no customer-initiated activity by the account holder or a third party on the account holder’s behalf for a period of two years. Such funds are transferred to Dormant Account Register (DAR) of the Banks.
The directive is vivid to allow financial institutions to take adequate steps to contact account holders at least three (3) months prior to an account falling into dormancy by serving a “Dormant Account Notice” through physical visitation, phone call or short messaging Services, Email, or any agreed form of communication during account initiation.
The regulated financial institution, after 3 years of dormancy, must also contact the Next of Kin of the accountholder when efforts to locate the Dormant Account Holder prove futile.
The banks and regulated financial institutions must publish the list of all dormant accounts on their website and remained on the same website for at least fourteen (14 days) calendar days.
It is imperative to note that the publication shall include that balances of the affected accounts, which shall also be transferred to the Bank of Ghana for keep after 14 days from the publication. Again, the banks and financial institutions will need to publish a dormant account within 6 months after it has been on the DAR for three years.
In an observation of seven Banks (Ghana Commercial Bank, Cal Bank, Agricultural Development Bank, Fidelity Bank, Zenith Bank, Republic Bank and Ecobank) selected across the country from March to September 2023, none of the banks has an updated dormant account list on their websites and at the banking halls, including headquarters and branches.
The banks and other regulated institutions must also display posters in all banking halls on the processes of reclaiming transferred funds of dormant account from the bank of Ghana.
This was done but in a small to medium photo frame, making it unreadable during our observations.
Dormant account awareness was also missing in all the banking halls, depicting a violation of Bank of Ghana’s directives and section 143 of the Banks and Specialized Deposit-Taking Institutions Act, 2016 (Act 930).
Regulated financial institutions that breach the provisions of the Directives and Act 930 are liable to administrative penalty of not more than ten thousand penalty units.
Article By Peter Bismark Kwofie
Executive Director of ILAPI, A Policy Think Tank.