If you don’t make any transactions on your account within a certain period of time (one year for banking accounts and three years for savings accounts) then we may treat it as being dormant to remove the risk of fraudulent activity. We’ll try and contact you before this happens.
It’s important to keep us up to date with your contact details, including telephone numbers and email addresses so that we can stay in touch with you. See the Changing your details page for more information.
While your account is dormant you won’t be able to make any transactions, including withdrawals or deposits and we’ll stop sending you statements, letters and cards. The money in your account is still yours, and it will continue to earn interest, if applicable at the rate offered on the account(s).
When we are treating your account as dormant it will need to be reactivated by us before you can use it or close it.
You can start this process in several ways.
- Log on to Mobile or Online Banking and send us a message in our secure chat service. Just ask to reactivate or close your dormant account(s) and follow the steps.
- Visit one of our branches. Please see our list of ID for information on what you may need to bring.
- Alternatively, you can contact us
Please have any documents about the account(s) to hand to help us find it quicker. These could be old bank statements, passbooks, correspondence, or any other relevant information relating to your account(s).
We voluntarily participate in the Dormant Assets Scheme. The Scheme was established under the Dormant Bank and Building Society Accounts Act 2008 and modified and expanded by the Dormant Assets Act 2022. These Acts are known together as the Dormant Assets Acts 2008 to 2022.
This voluntary scheme:
- allows money in dormant accounts for 15 years or more to be used to help communities across the UK, and
- makes sure the account holder (or beneficiaries) can get the funds in their dormant account(s) at any time
Under the Dormant Assets Scheme, we may transfer balances of dormant account(s) to Reclaim Fund Ltd (RFL). If we transfer the balance of your account to RFL:
- we'll only send them the funds. In the normal course of business we don’t send any personal data
- we'll stay your point of contact. Learn more about RFL
Please continue to contact us with any account query or if you want to reclaim your funds.
mylostaccount.org.uk can help you trace lost personal accounts if you are unsure of which bank or building society holds the account to which you have entitlement, including instances where the bank or building society has since closed or merged. National Savings and Investments (NS&I) can also be traced using this service.
It's a free service bringing together the three tracing schemes of UK Finance (UKF), the Building Societies Association (BSA) and (NS&I) into a single website. This means that anyone with a lost account with a bank, a building society, NS&I (or all three) can initiate a search simply by visiting this website and completing only one application form.