Oct 13, 2016 06:31 PM
2936 Views
The following review is based on the experience of my savings account and my Mother's salary account, both in SBI.
It used to be that banking services were provided free of cost and in addition a interest was paid on the account balance all in exchange for maintaining a minimum balance. Later banking corporations became greedy and automated all the tasks performed by the tellers and reduced overhead - for providing these services they stared charging an additional fees. So, we ended up paying money for taking money from us and giving a negligible interest. huh!.
I opened my account in branch 8167 in 27.10.2014. I provided them with my KYC documents and the account opening form was provided with a form for SBI Life Insurance form and a form for permission to auto deduct the insurance premium from the savings account. When I declined to have that, I was informed that all new accounts holders should have that policy aswell and that the insurance premium will be deducted from the account itself.
This is a misleading statement - SBI savings account and SBI life are unrelated products and having one does not depend on subscription to another. So, they simply LIED.
Selling term insurance in India is a herculean task, but the agent will get a handsome commission for each policy sold. So, apparently they are padding their own byline at cost to the customer.
For some reason only one person in the branch staff was needed to open account and another specific person for setting me up with internet banking credentials. The Internet banking guy was on leave on that day, so I had to come back and spend two days 10AM to 2.30 PM to get this set up!.
The second year's premium for the insurance, that I didn't want in the first place, was also auto deducted from the account. I raised a ticket in sbionline and I got a callback from the customer care rep who promised that the deductions will not happen again, and that the insurer will have to contact me for a renewal. I don't have much faith with the customer care and the next auto deduction will be the last one they ever make - i'll cancel this no good account.
And the other fees and charges levied are also unheard of -
CDM machine usage: Rs. 25(YES, THEY WANT YOU TO PAY TO TAKE MONEY FROM YOU)
IMPS: Rs. 5
Max withdrawal / transaction: Rs. 20,000(because they don't dispense 1K notes) - 5 transaction / month free
Post 5 transaction: Rs. 20 / transaction
Annual Maintenance Charge for ATM card: Rs. 100
And all of this is for a Government Salary account holder!.
Now most other banks will provide most of these features free of charge for salary accounts, but not SBI.
This brings me to prudent financial planning. My mother being a State Government employee used to leave a lot of funds in her account, Lakhs at a time, all yielding 4% interest. It took me a lot to convince her to take a FD at 8% interest!. Then I took charge of all house hold finance last month and moved all of the money into a balanced mutual fund with average CAGR of 13%.
My next plan of action is to activate internet banking for all these accounts and then cancel all debit and credit cards.
Well distributed ATMs and CDMs and a better internet banking portal among all the PSU banks are the only saving grace to this otherwise greedy corporation that can otherwise rott in hell.
Lesson Learned: Your savings bank account(including FD/RD) is not a investment, at least not a viable one. Never leave an excess paisa parked without reason in these accounts.
I also have another corporate salary account with Citi Bank India - they have been a pleasure to do business with. I have a Credit Card(without annual fee) and I have never been charged anything that I cannot justify(legally as well as ethically). I cannot say the same for SBI.
