The State Bank of Pakistan has announced that all commercial banking institutions and Development Finance Institutions have successfully surrendered their comprehensive ledgers of unclaimed deposits up to December 31, 2025. Following this regulatory transfer, the central bank has formally launched an online public portal alongside a structured verification mechanism allowing account holders or their legitimate legal successors to initiate refund claims. Under national financial guidelines, a standard deposit or financial instrument is automatically classified as unclaimed if it remains completely inoperative for a continuous period of ten years. This status triggers if an account records zero customer-initiated debit or credit transactions, no formal account statement requests, and zero administrative acknowledgments by the creditor during the decade-long timeline.
This sweeping asset mobilization is legally mandated under Section 31 of the Banking Companies Ordinance 1962. The statutory provision dictates that all commercial banks and DFIs must surrender dormant financial holdings—including fixed deposits, demand deposits, cheques, bank drafts, and bills of exchange—to the custody of the central bank once the ten-year inactivity threshold is breached. However, the law provides strict statutory immunities for specific categories of capital; accounts opened in the name of minors, funds belonging to federal or provincial government entities, and deposits controlled by a formal court of law are legally exempt from being categorized as unclaimed and cannot be surrendered to the central bank.
To simplify asset tracing for the public, the State Bank of Pakistan has integrated a decentralized verification matrix on its digital interface. Claimants can search the centralized database by selecting the respective calendar year and the specific banking company where the capital was originally held. The system then generates a localized Excel sheet detailing the originating branch name, domestic province, complete name of the account holder, valid Computerized National Identity Card or passport number, last recorded residential address, and the exact face value of the surrendered asset. If a match is found, the primary account holder or their legal heirs must physically approach the exact commercial branch where the account was initialized or where the financial instrument was fundamentally payable to kickstart the recovery pipeline.
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