Thread by @gathara

Question: When a bank declares your current account "inactive" and blocks it (meaning you no longer have access to it), why do they keep charging you to maintain it? What service are you paying for on an account they've blocked you from accessing? @KenyaBankers

Let's put this another way. I pay rent for a house but don't live there for, say, 6 months. Landlord declares the premises inactive, boards it up and says I can no longer use it unless I go to him to get new keys. Then keeps charging me rent. What would I be paying for?

Does @CBKKenya regulate bank charges? Or are banks pretty much free to levy whatever charges they wish? Does the CBK have a desk where one can complain if one feels their bank is dealing unfairly with them? If not CBK, then who? @wgkantai @KenyaBankers

If a fifth of all accounts are inactive and most Kenyans remain unaware that they may be accruing charges and penalties (despite being blocked by the bank itself), isn't this just banks deliberately extorting rents for services they are not providing?
sokodirectory.com/2020/02/it-wil…

A bank can block your account, prevent you from accessing the money still in it while continuing to charge you fees for "maintaining" the account, and require you to pay a fee in order to "activate" it again. How is this not theft? businessdailyafrica.com/bd/markets/sur…

Appears even @KenyaBankers are puzzled by this (at least until the tweet was pulled down).

In 2011, @CBKKenya declared that “failure to close a bank account does not in itself amount to defaulting on a loan" when saying banks should not blacklist folks over dormant accounts. Yet banks today are still threatening to do exactly that! @wgkantai
businessdailyafrica.com/bd/markets/cbk…

The problem of dormant accounts and the charges that accrue even after the banks have blocked them must have gotten exponentially worse in the last year following the disruptions caused by covid lockdowns. How many Kenyans are banks reporting to CRBs for blacklisting for this?

My bank manager claims it is a @CBKKenya regulation that requires banks to block inactive accounts (is that true @wgkantai?) although even she admitted that it would be "tricky" to justify the bank policy of continuing to impose ledger charges on blocked accounts.