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The Central Bank of Kuwait has been questioning bank officials, aiming to clarify what the CBK calls dormant accounts that have remained untouched for years.

The question is why does the bank keep his money instead of giving this money back to the owner or heirs. No charges have been filed against the background of the finds, some of which have reached more than a decade, while others have been in storage for decades, according to local Arabic. Daily newspapers report.

Added daily, there are several accounts of banks or financial and investment institutions that are described as dormant because their owners have not contacted these financial institutions for a long time, and bankers are concerned about this phenomenon. says it’s nothing new, but now it looks like CBK authorities are trying to deal with the file in a drastic way.

However, the bank said it was unable to contact the holders of these accounts and all attempts, including coordinating with the Citizens Information Corporation to update the data of these customers, have failed. No bank has ever been successful in contacting and these accounts have been unclaimed for decades.

On the other hand, it is known that the central bank has privately expressed the need to make more bank efforts in this regard, whereby banks, in preparation for anticipating the central bank’s opinion on the bank’s potential, Began to explore other possible solutions. application.

Banks aren’t the only ones facing problems dealing with dormant accounts. There are also local investment funds that suffer from this accounting problem.

In fact, several factors have contributed to the increase in the number of dormant bank accounts in Kuwait. The first is the public offering of joint-stock companies in which the state has offered shares to citizens as a large segment. One of them opened a bank account for these properties before he lost contact with the bank. There are also forgotten accounts opened since the late 1980s.

Accounts have also been opened in some banks since the mid-1990s, but they are “forgotten” because the deposits are so low that the owners have not made withdrawals or deposits since then. The fact is that some account holders abandoned them years ago after moving to another bank.

According to sources, some of these accounts have balances not exceeding 15 dinars, while others reach hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Also, recently there has been a high turnover rate among expatriates and an increasing proportion of dormant accounts due to retirement or deportation, but the amounts are often very low, some containing only a few dinars. There is also I can count on my fingertips.

The central bank is keen to return the inactive amounts to the beneficiaries for multiple reasons, sources said. On the one hand, these amounts represent the bank’s stagnant debt and cannot be disposed of for bank purposes. On the other hand, there are regulatory concerns about possible illegal withdrawals from inactive accounts. For years, it has been at risk of being abused by unscrupulous employees who prey on such accounts.

When it comes to banking, especially in the last decade, banks have created more comprehensive databases to make it easier for banks to reach neglected account holders. When the owner dies, we temporarily freeze the account until the beneficiary claims the money.