Since March, several small and medium-sized banks have issued intensive announcements to carry out centralized and standardized cleaning of inefficient accounts such as long-term no transactions, low balances, and inconsistent identity information. At the same time, multiple institutions have clearly stated that they will establish an annual regular cleaning mechanism to promote the transition of bank account management from phased special rectification to long-term control. Yang Haiping, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Finance and Law, told reporters that the centralized clearance of "dormant accounts" by small and medium-sized banks is mainly based on three considerations: first, strict implementation of relevant regulatory requirements; The second is to strengthen risk prevention and control. Long term inactive accounts are prone to fraud and theft, becoming tools for illegal activities such as telecommunications fraud and money laundering. The clean-up work can effectively protect the security of customer funds; The third is to meet the needs of refined management, reduce the system and labor costs of ineffective account occupation, and optimize the customer management system. The clean-up work will enter the normalization stage. Reporters found that the scope of this clean-up covers personal and corporate bank settlement accounts, with "long-term no active transactions" and "low balance" as the main judgment criteria. At the same time, accounts with expired documents, non real name account opening, and one person multiple accounts with abnormal information will be included in the scope of clean-up. Unlike previous short-term special actions, "establishing an annual normalization mechanism" has become a prominent feature of this round of clean-up work, and multiple banks have clarified the subsequent normalization execution arrangements. Specifically, on March 19th, Hejiang Rural Commercial Bank issued a notice on clearing personal bank settlement accounts, stating that it will clean up multiple accounts for one person; Clean up the accounts where the contact phone number does not correspond to the ID card number one by one. The bank will clean up eligible accounts starting from June 30, 2026, and will continue to clean up eligible accounts annually thereafter. Pinghe Rural Commercial Bank clarified the definition criteria for inefficient unit settlement accounts in its announcement on March 14: from March 1, 2025 to February 28, 2026, unit settlement accounts that have not initiated any payment or receipt business and have not settled any debts owed to the bank are within the scope of clearance. The announcement shows that the first round of clean-up will be carried out in April 2026, and will be conducted annually thereafter. The announcement recently released by Qinghai Bank also clarifies the standards for clearing long-term inactive personal accounts: as of March 30, 2026, long-term inactive personal bank settlement accounts (excluding social security card accounts) that have not actively engaged in deposit, withdrawal, transfer and other active transactions for two consecutive years or more, with a balance of 50 yuan or less, and have no credit card binding repayment, loan repayment, large deposit certificates, wealth management, ETC and other signing relationships will be included in the clearing. The bank stated that after the first round of clean-up is completed on March 31, 2026, eligible accounts will be regularly regulated annually. In addition, several small and medium-sized banks such as Gushi Tianjiao Rural Bank and Panzhihua Rural Commercial Bank have followed up and carried out centralized and standardized clean-up work. Among them, several banks have clearly stated that they will implement annual regular cleaning and build a new account control model of "centralized rectification+long-term management" in the future. The recent intensive clean-up of dormant accounts by small and medium-sized banks is not only a compliance measure for the financial industry under regulatory guidance, but also an active adjustment for small and medium-sized banks to cope with operational pressure, which helps to achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement. ”Xue Hongyan, a special researcher at Su Shang Bank, told reporters. From a regulatory perspective, small and medium-sized banks have become a key focus of regulatory attention due to their account management shortcomings such as lagging customer information updates and relatively insufficient identity verification technology. From a business perspective, small and medium-sized banks are generally facing challenges such as narrowing net interest margins and profit pressures. Long term inactive accounts continue to occupy system resources and labor costs. Cleaning up "dormant accounts" can help optimize account structure and achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvement. Xue Hongyan believes that for banks themselves, this move can reduce the ineffective occupation of resources, lower operating costs, use saved resources to optimize products and services, strengthen account lifecycle management, and enhance risk control levels. At the industry level, this move can also promote account information sharing and collaborative supervision among financial institutions, helping to build a more comprehensive financial security defense line. Looking ahead to the normalization of cleaning up work in the future, Xue Hongyan suggests that banks should establish a hierarchical and classified management mechanism, develop differentiated cleaning strategies based on account dormancy time, balance situation, risk level, etc., and optimize customer notification processes to fully protect the right to information of financial consumers. In addition, technological upgrades should be made to enhance identity verification and risk identification capabilities, making cleaning work more efficient and accurate. (New Society)