Banks in Asia and Africa apply inactivity fees that silently reduce forgotten account balances over time, while large sums remain in official recovery schemes that many account holders are unaware of.
Bank accounts left unused for six to twelve months in many Asian and African markets do not sit idle; they shrink as inactivity fees are deducted without notification or visible indication until balances fall.
According to data reported by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in 2025, unclaimed deposits in Indian banks rose 26% to INR 78,213 crore (approximately $9.4 billion), funds held in accounts that have not been operated by their owners for 10 years or more, with the State Bank of India alone holding INR 19,330 crore (approximately $2.3 billion) of that total. In Kenya, banks closed 33.8 million accounts in the year to June 2025, representing 30% of all deposit accounts in the banking system. In the UAE, one documented case recorded AED 2,700 (approximately $735) in charges applied to a single dormant account. These are not edge cases or institutional failures; they are the predictable output of a fee structure applied silently to accounts whose holders have no idea a charge is being levied.
Banks charge inactivity fees without alerting account holders
Inactivity or dormancy fees are charges applied by banks to accounts that show no transaction activity for a specified period. That period varies by institution and market: six months in some cases, 12 in others. The fee is typically deducted directly from the balance, with no invoice, no separate notification, no new statement sent to prompt the account holder to check. The balance simply becomes smaller, month by month or year by year, until it reaches zero.
The mechanism is most damaging to small-balance accounts. An account holding the equivalent of $50 in local currency, charged a monthly inactivity fee of $2, will reach zero in 25 months without a single transaction by the account holder. In markets across Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, small-balance accounts are common: they represent the savings of workers, students and newly banked households who may not check their accounts regularly precisely because the balances are small.
The transition from active to dormant status differs from dormant to unclaimed. In most regulatory frameworks, an account must go untransacted for a defined period, commonly two to five years, before it is formally classified as dormant. In India, the threshold is 10 years before funds are transferred to the RBI's Depositor Education and Awareness Fund, though banks may apply inactivity fees well before this point.
The populations most exposed are those with multiple accounts: workers who opened salary accounts at previous employers, households that switched banks when a better rate was available, and migrants who returned home without closing accounts held in host countries. None think of themselves as having a fee-generating liability. Each of them has one.
Regulatory responses vary by market. The RBI in 2025 launched a scheme running through September 2026 to facilitate the return of inoperative account funds, including an online portal called UDGAM (Unclaimed Deposits – Gateway to Access Information), where account holders can search for dormant funds by name and date of birth. In most Southeast Asian and Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) markets, notification requirements for inactivity fees remain discretionary.
Account holders can recover dormant balances through official channels
The RBI's UDGAM portal at udgam.rbi.org.in allows any account holder to search for unclaimed deposits across multiple Indian banks using basic personal information. As of July 2025, more than 860,000 individuals had used the platform. The portal is free and requires no appointment.
For accounts outside India, the relevant central bank or deposit insurance body in most markets maintains an equivalent process. The Central Bank of Kenya, Bank Negara Malaysia, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the UAE Central Bank each publish consumer guidance on unclaimed deposits and inoperative account procedures, accessible from each body's official website.
Preventing future dormancy requires only two steps: logging into every existing bank account at least once every six months to generate a transaction record, and formally closing any account no longer in use. Most banks allow account closures through their mobile application or in branch. A closed account generates no further fees; an inactive one does.
Checking the fee schedule for every active account, specifically the inactivity fee structure and the period after which it applies, takes less than 10 minutes. The terms and conditions are available from the bank's website or on request. Most account holders have never checked this figure for accounts opened more than two years ago.
The households most likely to have unclaimed balances are those who have changed employers, countries, or banks in the last five to fifteen years without formally closing their previous accounts. This describes a significant proportion of the migration-active workforce across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
Forgotten accounts are recoverable assets, not permanent losses
The INR 78,213 crore ($9.4 billion) sitting in Indian banks is not lost: it is dormant, claimable, and subject to an active government recovery programme. The same principle applies in every market with an unclaimed deposits framework. The households that benefit from these programmes are not the ones who eventually hear about them. They are the ones who check today.
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