February 9: There has been a rise in the number of dormant accounts of customers who open bank accounts but do not use them for a long time. The rise in number of dormant account can be attributed to the culture of opening more than one bank account but only utilizing one of them for transactions.

It has been said that the number of such accounts has been increasing since the last 10 years as many of the conflict victims have not come into contact. Banks and financial institutions (BFIs) need to make public the list of dormant accounts. As per the provisions, the accounts which have remained unused for six months are called dormant accounts. If the customers do not deposit or withdraw from their account for more than six months, the BFIs automatically categorise such accounts as dormant accounts. The customers need to file an application in the same branch where they first opened the account to activate the dormant account.

BFIs have a total of 25 million deposit accounts. Nepal Rastra Bank has instructed BFIs to mention the names of the customers of dormant accounts on their website. However, only a few BFIs have dormant accounts displayed on their website.

Out of the 28 commercial banks, only five have followed the instruction of the central bank.

Rastriya Banijya Bank alone has 67,441 dormant accounts. However, the documents burnt at branch offices during the insurgency period do not have back-up copies. The number is high also because the next-in-kin of those killed in the war have not come forward to claim the accounts, informed RBB’s CEO Bhupendra Pandey.