Nairobi, May 5 -- Nearly a third of bank accounts have been closed for being inactive, freezing billions of shillings in the wake of data clean-up.

Banks shut down 33.8 million accounts in the year to June 2025, representing 30 percent of the 112.5 million deposit accounts the industry held before the crackdown.

Data from the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation (KDIC) shows that the number of accounts fell from 112.5 million in June 2024 to 78.7 million in June 2025, following what lenders described as a "data clean-up exercise."

"The account clean-up was attributed to the rationalisation of dormant or inactive accounts," said KDIC in its latest annual report.

The amount held in dormant accounts could run into billions of shillings. ...