The State Bank of India has good news for all of its Savings Bank account holders; the bank announced that SB account holders can now convert their account to Basic Savings Bank Deposit in order to avoid the account maintenance charges.
As per a report, the Bank has made it clear that it has collected a penalty of over Rs. 11, 500 crore from the users for not maintaining their average minimum balance (AMB) over last four years. But now as per the recent statement given by the SBI that SB accounts, such as PMJDY/BSBD, and of pensioners/ minors/ social security benefit holders are exempted from the AMB requirement, and that charges would not be recovered from these accounts.
It also reiterated that effective April 2018, the AMB requirement has been reduced up to 40 per cent, keeping in view the feedback from various stakeholders. Similarly, the bank has steeply reduced charges for non-maintenance of AMB up to 70 per cent in metro/urban and semi-urban categories. Charges in rural market were also reduced up to 75 per cent.
It claimed that its charges for non-maintenance of AMB are among the lowest in the industry.
It charges between ₹5-15 (plus GST) for various levels of shortfall in different areas. Its customers are required to maintain an average monthly balance of ₹3,000 for SB accounts in metros and urban areas, ₹2,000 in semi-urban and ₹1,000 in rural areas.
