A total of Rs 21,044 crore was accrued due to failure in maintaining the minimum balance, while an additional sum of Rs 8,289 crore was gathered from supplementary ATM transactions.
Parliament has been informed by the Union government that banks have amassed more than Rs 35,000 crore in penalty fees since 2018. These charges were incurred by customers due to actions such as not maintaining the required minimum balances, exceeding ATM transaction limits, and availing SMS services.
The statistics encompass data gathered from both public-sector banks and prominent private sector banks, which notably include Axis Bank Ltd., HDFC Bank Ltd., ICICI Bank Ltd., IndusInd Bank Ltd., and IDBI Bank Ltd. These figures span the past five years and were disclosed by Bhagwat Karad, the Minister of State for Finance, in a written response provided in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
Karad highlighted that among the notable banks, a total sum of Rs 21,044.4 crore was amassed due to customers failing to maintain the minimum required bank balance. Additionally, Rs 8,289.3 crore was accrued from supplementary ATM transactions, while Rs 6,254.3 crore was garnered from SMS services.
Starting from April 1, 2015, banks have been authorized by the Reserve Bank of India's comprehensive directive on customer service in banks to establish rational penalty fees regarding insufficient maintenance of the minimum balance in savings accounts.
As stipulated in the RBI circular, banks were obligated to implement an alert mechanism for various transaction categories. However, to maintain fairness, the central bank recommended that these charges be imposed on customers based on actual occurrences.
Concerning ATM transactions, as of November 2022, the revised ATM directives from the RBI indicate that banks extend a minimum of five cost-free financial transactions per month to holders of savings-bank accounts, regardless of the transaction location.
Customers are also entitled to three complimentary transactions in metropolitan cities and five in non-metropolitan areas each month for financial transactions conducted at ATMs of other banks, as per the same guidelines.
