Thousands of BSP Dormant Bank Accounts to be closed

Up to 14,000 dormant accounts at Bank of South Pacific Financial Group Limited will be closed and funds remitted to the Department of Finance at the end of 2022.

BSP Group Chief Executive Officer Robin Fleming told NBC News that most of these customer accounts have less than K20 and have not been charged account maintenance fees since.

He said under Sections 6 (3) and 7(1)(a)(b)(i) of the Unclaimed Monies Act 1963, customer funds which remained unused for more than seven (7) years will be paid to the Finance Department, and therefore is encouraging customers concerned to approach the Bank and claim their monies or reactivate their accounts, among other options.

"One of the main reasons we have such a large number of accounts that haven't been activated is because we stopped charging a monthly maintenance fee on those accounts. And we stopped charging that monthly maintenance fees many years ago now."

"We actually have almost 6,000 accounts which have balances less than K10 in them and another 2 and half thousand accounts with balances less than K20, which shows that by not charging the fees so as funds can remain in the customer's account and we advertise so that the customers can contact us to recover and reclaim those monies."

"We also go through that process of trying to contact customers for the larger value accounts and again we encourage people who haven't used their accounts for a period of time or where they think there are funds still remaining there to contact BSP," said Mr. Fleming.

NBC News / PNG Today

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