Customers advised to check on dormant bank accounts

Customers can easily lose track of their bank accounts just by being “a little bit disorganised”, a financial expert said today.

The comments, from money education charity Credit Action, came after Halifax announced that it would be attempting to re-unite customers with money that they held in inactive, or ‘dormant’ bank accounts.

A bank account is automatically classified as “dormant” if it remains unused over a 15-year period.

Deputy director at Credit Action Chris Tapp said that dormants accounts were generally created “when there’s a change of circumstance: if somebody moves home, particularly if they move abroad. In the confusion of those changing circumstances, people just forget – it’s almost as simple as that.”

He also suggested that the fact that “banking has become so much more complicated”, with many holding multiple accounts, as a reason behind the dormancies.

The Unclaimed Assets Register, maintained by creditors Experian, tracks dormant bank accounts, estimating that a total of £15.3 billion is held in them.

A Treasury Select Committee also recommended this week that money sitting in such accounts should be reinvested in good causes.

Tags: financial expert, change, tracks dormant bank, committee, GBP

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