The country's largest lender SBI on Wednesday waived the minimum balance requirement in savings bank (SB) accounts—a move that is expected to benefit all the 44.51 crore savings bank account holders.
SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar, while announcing the waiver, said in a statement, “This announcement will bring in more smiles and delight to our valuable customers. Waiving AMB (Average Monthly Balance) is SBI’s yet another initiative to provide customers a more convenience and elated banking experience. We believe this initiative would empower our customers towards banking with SBI and boost their confidence in SBI.”
It also added that the charges on maintaining AMB are now waived on all 44.51 crore SB accounts.
Currently, SB customers need to maintain an AMB of Rs 3,000, Rs 2,000 and Rs 1,000 in metro, semi-urban and rural areas, respectively. The bank used to levy a penalty of Rs 5 to Rs 15 plus taxes on non-maintenance of AMB.
SBI also waived SMS charges levied on quarterly basis.
It also rationalised interest rate on all SB accounts to a flat 3 per cent, a move affecting 44.51 crore account holders. Currently, the interest rate on SB accounts is 3.25 per cent for deposits up to Rs 1 lakh in SB accounts, and 3 per cent for deposits above Rs 1 lakh.
Earlier in the day, SBI reduced its fixed deposit rates for certain tenors and marginal cost of funds-based lending rates (MCLR) across various tenors.
Making it a second reduction in a month, the public sector bank reduced retail term deposits (less than Rs 2 crore) by 10 to 50 basis points for a few tenors.
In February, the bank had slashed term deposits rates by 10-50 basis points in the retail segment and 25-50 basis points in the bulk segment.
SBI is the largest commercial bank in terms of assets, deposits, branches, customers and employees. It is also the largest mortgage lender in the country. As on December 31, 2019, the bank has a deposit base of over Rs 31 lakh crore with 21,959 branches in India.
(With PTI inputs)
