- Banks earned Rs 19,083 crore in three years from minimum balance charges.
- Private banks accounted for the lion’s share of earnings, with HDFC Bank on top.
- Public sector banks also deposited Rs 8,092 crore from the fine.
- Banks like SBI and PNB no longer charge minimum balance charges.
Minimum Balance Penalty: A huge amount of money is being accumulated due to the charges being collected from the customers for not maintaining the prescribed minimum balance in the bank accounts. According to the information, in the last three years, Indian banks have collected about Rs 19,083 crore through such fines. This means that these small charges are having a huge impact on the pockets of customers.
CA Kanan Bahl has expressed his concern on this topic on LinkedIn. He believes that when people are already struggling with money crunch, then it is not right to collect money from people through this kind of penalty.
Private banks ahead in earning from penalty
The figures of earnings from minimum balance charges show that private banks have a major share in this. According to RupeeTool, private banks including HDFC Bank have collected penalty of about Rs 10,991 crore in the last three years. Which is more than half of the total fine amount.
At the same time, government banks have also collected charges of about Rs 8,092 crore during this period. These figures clearly show that private and government banks together have deposited a huge amount from this fine.
HDFC Bank becomes number 1
Talking about different banks, HDFC Bank remains at the top in this list. The bank has deposited around Rs 3,871 crore as fine. Apart from this, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Bank of Baroda have also taken penalty of more than Rs 1000 crore.
There is no penalty in these banks
The country’s largest government banks State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank do not charge any charge for not maintaining minimum balance. However, in earlier years these same banks had earned a good amount of money from such penalties. Which shows that at that time these charges were an important part of his income.
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