e abands honed their bank accounts majorly due to
MORE Nigerianave abands honed the find ir bank accounts majorly due to economic hardship caused by sluggish economic growth, rising job losses and reduction in purchasing power occasioned by double digit inflation.
Statistics from the
Nigeria Interbank Settlement System, NIBSS, showed that Nigerians abandoned 10
million bank accounts in 2018. NIBSS is owned by all Nigerian banks and the
Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN.
According to the
company, the number of bank accounts abandoned by bank customers and hence
categorised as
house ‘inactive bank accounts’ rose by 28 percent to 46.7 million in
2018 from 36.7 million in 2017.
Depositor-initiated transaction
According to the CBN
2015 guidelines on dormant accounts, “An account shall become inactive if there
has been no custome
business r or depositor-initiated transaction for a period of six
months after the last customer or depositor initiated transaction.”
This implies that in
just one year, ten million bank accounts recorded zero transactions.
Financial Vanguard
analysis also showed a steady growth in the number of inactive bank accounts
between 2014 and 2018.
According to NIBSS,
inactive bank accounts grew faster than active bank accounts in the past five
years, 2014 to 2018.
During this period,
inactive bank accounts grew by 73 percent while active bank accounts grew by 35
percent. 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.
Financial Vanguard
investigations and the comments from both bankers and bank customers, indicate
that factors responsible for the steady and huge growth in the number of
inactive bank accounts are many and varied. These include ownership of multiple
bank accounts by some bank customers, breakdown in bank-customer relationship,
Biometric Verification Number (BVN) issues, incomplete account opening
documentation and Know Your Customer, KYC, challenges as well as increased
efforts against money laundering and other financial frauds by banks and the
regulatory authorities.
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