The guidelines define a dormant account as an account that has remained inactive for at least one year or six months after the last customer-initiated transaction. The CBN will also impose a daily penalty of N200,000 until full compliance is achieved.
The CBN issued the guidelines in response to requests from banks and stakeholders for clarification on managing dormant and inactive accounts in Nigeria.
The guidelines stipulate that banks must bear the costs of maintaining inactive and dormant accounts, contact customers, notify account owners when an account becomes inactive, and continue to reflect dormant account balances as deposit liabilities until they are transferred to the CBN.
According to the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System, there were 57.9 million inactive accounts out of a total of 191.4 million bank accounts as of December 2021.