RBI asks banks to track dormant accounts

The Reserve Bank of India has asked banks to proactively track dormant accountholders so that the accounts can either be revived or the balance can be transferred to a new account/legal heirs.

The central bank directive comes as banks have a large number of inoperative accounts (about one crore) with unclaimed deposits of around Rs 1,700 crore.

Annual review

Directing banks to conduct an annual review of accounts which are dormant, the central bank has asked them to write to customers informing them about their inoperative accounts and also seek reasons for the same.

Deposit accounts —- savings and current — are treated as dormant (there is no credit or debit other than crediting of periodic interest or debiting of service charges) if there are no transactions in them for over two years.

If a customer has moved from a locality, the bank should seek details of the new bank account to which the balance can be transferred, the RBI said.

The central bank wants banks to make efforts to track customers through telephone or email their legal heirs/the persons who introduced them to the bank/employer in cases where letters sent to customers are returned undelivered.

If an accountholder gives reasons for not operating the account, banks should continue classifying the account as an operative account for one more year within which period the accountholder should operate the account. However, if the accountholder does not operate the account during the extended period, banks should classify the account as inoperative.

Where a customer has given a mandate for crediting the interest on fixed deposit account to the SB account and there are no other operations in the SB account, then the account should be treated as operative.

The savings bank account can be treated as inoperative only after two years from the date of the last credit entry of interest on the fixed deposit account.

kram@thehindu.co.in

COMMENT NOW