How to Close a UAE Bank Account: AED 105 Inside Six Months, Free After, and AED 315 a Year If You Leave It Open

The statement I want to walk through is the dullest one I own. It belongs to the account my first employer in the UAE opened for me, the one the salary stopped landing in the month I changed jobs. For a year and a half after that it produced a statement with exactly one line a month: a maintenance fee. Nothing came in, nothing went out, and the balance walked down by the same amount every month like a meter.

Most people in the UAE end up with one of these. The bank is chosen by the employer, the next employer chooses a different one, and the first account is left to fend for itself. Two Central Bank documents decide what that costs.

What closing a UAE bank account actually costs: AED 105 in the first six months, nothing after

The rule sits in the Central Bank’s Consumer Protection Standards (N 1158/2021). Article 4.2.1.5 says that “Consumers must be permitted to close or switch accounts (current and saving account) without Fees any time after 6 months of opening the account with the Licensed Financial Institution.” Article 5.1.1.32 repeats it from the bank’s side: on a closure request the bank must “Not impose a closing fee / penalty if the account has been open for a period of 6 months or more.”

Inside those six months the same document’s annexure of maximum fees caps the “Account closure fee” at AED 100. Add 5% VAT and the number on the schedule is AED 105, which is exactly what both big schedules show. Emirates NBD’s July 2026 schedule of charges lists “Account closure (within 6 months) AED 105.00” for every package. ADCB’s schedule effective 28 March 2025 lists “Account closure AED 105”, with a note that the charge is waived “if the account is closed within 30 days from opening; but shall be applicable after 30 days until 6 months of account opening.”

So the fee is a small window: after day 30 and before month six at ADCB, before month six at Emirates NBD, and never after. What costs money is the paperwork around it, and the timing.

The order the bank runs a closure in, and the two letters it charges for

Article 5.1.1.32 also sets the clock. The bank must “Acknowledge in Writing within 2 complete business days” and, for anything other than credit card, payment and investment accounts, “close all other accounts within the prescribed time limit of 7 complete business days from the date of the Consumer’s request.” By the eighth business day it must produce “all documentation including clearance and liability letters that are required to facilitate the closure and transfer” and give written confirmation. Credit cards run on a longer clock: the bank “must close the account within 45 calendar days” and the card “should be frozen or blocked once the Consumer has requested the closure.”

That sequence matters more than the fee. The branch will not close an account that still has a card, a loan instalment, or a standing order attached to it, and it will not close one with money in it. Deepthi Nair’s guide in The National on 17 August 2023 put it bluntly: “Banks can only close an account with a zero balance.” So the steps, in the order the bank runs them, are:

1. Move the salary and every standing order and direct debit to the new account. A standing order that fires against an empty account costs AED 26.25 at Emirates NBD (“Failed Standing Instruction and DDS”), and a card payment that misses because its auto-debit pointed at an empty account is a missed payment on the card, not just a line on the statement.
2. Settle the cards and loans linked to the account, or re-point their repayment.
3. Empty the account to zero. Transfer out, then request closure, not the other way round.
4. Pay for the letter if a new bank or an employer wants one. The annexure caps a “No liability certificate” at AED 60; Emirates NBD charges AED 52.50 for a “Liability/No Liability letter” and ADCB AED 63.

One letter, a transfer fee at most, and seven business days. That is the whole cost of closing an account older than half a year.

The closure is free. The account you forgot to close is the one with a price.

What leaving it open costs instead: AED 315 a year, then three years of silence, then the Central Bank

Here is where the dull statement gets interesting. Emirates NBD’s Classic package carries “Maintenance Fees” of “AED 26.25 per month” for an account without the “regular deposit of the minimum prescribed salary” and a second maintenance fee at the same rate for one that fails to keep the “prescribed monthly average balance,” which is AED 3,000. An account the salary has left, holding less than AED 3,000, is paying the fee. That is AED 315 a year, taken from a balance that is not growing.

The Dormant Accounts and Unclaimed Funds Regulation (C 9/2025, issued 31 December 2025) says how long that can go on. Article 2.2 classes an account as dormant when there have been no customer transactions or service requests “for a period of three (3) years from the date of the last transaction on the account, other than transactions initiated by the LFI (such as Interest and charges posted by the system or manually).” The bank’s own fee lines do not reset the clock. Article 2.1 adds a condition people miss: dormancy is defined at customer level, so an account only goes dormant if the customer has no other active account with the same bank and “the current address of the customer is not known.”

Once dormant, the charges stop. Article 7.4 reads: “No debits or system based charges must be levied on dormant accounts.” Article 5.3 goes further: “No fee or charges should be levied for re-activation or closing such accounts or making claims of unclaimed funds.” Before it gets there the bank must try to reach the customer and “wait for a period of three (3) months for a response” (Article 3.4). And under Article 8.1, “If an account remains dormant for a period of 5 years from the date of the last transaction on the account, the LFI must transfer the net amount to ‘Unclaimed Balances Account - Dormant Accounts’ at the Central Bank.”

The money is not lost. Article 7.1 states that it “will remain the property of the customer, or his/her legal heirs,” and Article 4.3 obliges the bank to settle a reclaim “within a period of one (1) month unless there are valid reasons for delay.” But a foreign-currency balance is converted to dirhams “at the LFI’s published customer rates” on the day of transfer (Article 8.5), and a reclaim means a branch visit with original ID.

Put a number on it. Say AED 2,000 was left behind, no salary, no other account at that bank.

AED 945 in fees to avoid a closure that would have been free, plus five years and a branch visit to get the rest back. The balance never went to zero on its own, so the account never closed on its own.

The five-minute version

If the account is older than six months: move the salary and standing orders, clear the card, transfer the balance to zero, then request closure in writing and note the date. The bank owes an acknowledgement in two business days and a closed account in seven. Younger than six months, the same steps plus AED 105.

In my own books the old account stayed on the list at its real, shrinking balance until the closure letter arrived, because a balance the bank still holds is still my money. An account is not gone when the salary leaves it. It is gone when the bank says so, in writing, and until then it has a monthly line.