Dormant accounts: Inactive bank accounts hike by 28% to 46.7m in 2018-NIBSS

Motolani Oseni

Due to the economic hardship caused by sluggish economic growth, rising job losses, inactive bank accounts rose significantly in the country by 28 per cent to 46.7 million in 2018 from 36.7 million stood in 2017, latest figure from the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) has revealed. With this development, it means that Nigerians abandoned not less than a whopping 10 million bank accounts in the year under review, owing to a reduction in purchasing power, occasioned by double-digit inflation, among many other economic factors. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) guidelines on dormant accounts, “an account shall become inactive if there has been no customer or depositor-initiated transaction for a period of six months after the last customer or depositor initiated a transaction.” The NIBSS latest report, however, stated that inactive bank accounts grew by 73 per cent while active bank accounts grew by 35 per cent.
While inactive bank accounts increased by 19.61 million to 46.7 million in 2018 from 27.09 million in 2014, active bank accounts rose by 24.75 million to 71.2 million in 2018 from 46.45 million in 2014. It is, however, note worthy that Nigerians often abandon their bank accounts due to some unnecessary bank charges. In fact, findings have shown that Nigerians bank account holders abandoned their account for different reasons, such as arbitrary bank charges, endless unresolved bank-related issues, among many other unnecessary reductions in their bank accounts.