Ghana’s banks are holding dormant account funds that legally belong to the families of deceased customers, and neither the banks nor the Bank of Ghana are taking sufficient action to return them. This is the central argument of Richard Amarh, a lawyer and Executive Director of the Centre for Legitimacy and Rule of Law (CLROL), who spoke to The High Street Journal about what he describes as a systemic failure that is quietly robbing vulnerable families of the inheritance they are legally entitled to claim.
In October 2024, ILAPI, the Institute for Liberty and Policy Innovation, filed a Right to Information request to the Bank of Ghana. The response confirmed that the central bank had received approximately GH₵167 million in cedis, around $12 million in US dollars, £2.5 million in British pounds, and €2.3 million in euros from commercial banks across the country. Converted into cedis at the time, the total was close to GH₵400 million.
“As we speak now, the amount could be higher,” Amarh told this publication. And with every month that passes without families being informed, the risk that this money will permanently disappear grows.
Amarh is talking about the widow who does not know her late husband had a savings account. The adult child who buried a parent without knowing that funds were sitting in a bank. The family stretched to breaking point, paying for a mentally ill relative’s care, unaware that the relative had deposits that could ease that burden. “These categories of persons certainly have family members who would otherwise need these funds,” he said.
What The Law Requires, And What Is Actually Happening
When a customer does not operate their account for two years, the bank is required to declare it dormant. If a further three years pass without the account being reactivated, the bank is legally mandated to transfer the funds to the Bank of Ghana. Crucially, before declaring any account dormant, the law requires the bank to first contact the account holder’s next of kin.
According to Amarh, that contact is simply not happening. “The banks do not contact the next of kin,” he said. As a result, families are left entirely in the dark, unaware that a relative held an account, and therefore with no means to act on it.
The same law also requires banks to periodically publish the details of dormant accounts. CLROL’s checks found that only a few banks are complying, and even those publications fall short. Putting a name like “Bright Owusu” on a website without additional identifying details, Amarh argued, tells a potential claimant almost nothing. “There could be 10,000 Bright Owusus in Ghana,” he said. “If you just put Bright Owusu and say his account went dormant in 2016, I don’t think that is enough information for me to determine whether this person is my family member or not.”
The result, he said, is that even the banks that are technically in compliance are not fulfilling the spirit of the law.
A Business Incentive To Do Nothing
Amarh pointed directly at the financial incentive that makes non-compliance attractive to banks. During the five-year window before funds are transferred to the Bank of Ghana, money sitting in dormant accounts functions as free capital. Banks can deploy it, lending it out or investing in government securities, and earn returns on it without any obligation to the account holder.
“There is every incentive for the banks not to be interested in contacting the next of kin,” he said. Tracing dormant accounts and reaching out to families costs money and requires dedicated resources. In the absence of regulatory pressure, there is simply no business case for doing it voluntarily.
He acknowledged that the Bank of Ghana maintains that it does not invest the funds it receives. But he was measured about that assurance. “We are just taking that as they have told us,” he said, adding that the potential for the central bank to earn on those funds also exists.
The Legal Trap That Locks Families Out Permanently
Even for families who know a relative has died, Ghana’s inheritance framework creates a structural barrier that is difficult to overcome without information. Under both the Wills Act and the intestate succession regime, families applying to a court to administer a deceased person’s estate are required to declare all known assets. The court order they receive in return only covers what they declare.
If a family does not know a particular bank account exists because the bank never contacted the next of kin, and the details were never published, they cannot declare it. And if they do not declare it, no court order will authorise them to retrieve it. “There is absolutely no way that you can mention that bank account,” Amarh explained. “And if you do not mention that bank account, it means the papers that the court will give to you will not authorise you to go for the money in that bank, and that money stands to be left with the Bank of Ghana forever.”
Forever, in this case, means the funds are eventually absorbed into government revenue. It is, as Amarh described it, a legal confiscation of private wealth, one that the current framework enables quietly and at scale.
What CLROL is asking for
CLROL is calling on the Bank of Ghana to mandate the creation of a dedicated, searchable public platform where all dormant account information from every bank in the country is consolidated in one place. The website, Amarh explained, should function like a search engine, one that allows a person to enter their own details alongside those of a deceased relative and find out whether any bank in Ghana holds funds in that person’s name.
He pointed to a working model already in existence. The state of Massachusetts in the United States operates a government-funded website that allows residents to trace unclaimed funds belonging to deceased relatives. “You cannot find something like this in Ghana,” he said. “And so many people are losing out on funds that they could have retrieved.”
On the concern that easier access could enable fraud, Amarh was direct. The legal regime in Ghana, he argued, already guards against this. No bank will release funds from a deceased person’s account without a court order, either probate under the Wills Act or letters of administration under intestate succession, and obtaining either requires submitting a death certificate, burial permit, and other documentation to the courts. “The duty of the bank is to just confirm that the document coming from the court is genuine or not, and nothing more,” he said.
Petitions To Follow
CLROL confirmed it will formally petition the Bank of Ghana, the Attorney General, and Parliament. The organisation argues that meaningful reform will require legislative changes, a process that involves both the Attorney General’s office and the legislature, and indicated it may escalate to the Presidency if necessary.
Amarh was careful to frame the campaign as entirely non-partisan. “We are non-political and non-governmental, and our policy positions are informed by the social evidence that we see,” he said. “The issues on a general basis that affect all Ghanaians.”
At its core, the issue CLROL is raising is straightforward: the law already requires banks to tell families that their relatives had accounts. The question is whether the institutions responsible for enforcing that requirement will be compelled to act before more of that GH₵400 million quietly becomes government revenue, and the families it could have reached never find out it existed.
