Banking

Banks may offer some fixed deposits without a premature-withdrawal option — but not for ordinary individual deposits of ₹1 crore or less. The RBI’s Interest Rate on Deposits Directions say commercial banks “shall” provide premature withdrawal facility on all term deposits accepted from individuals (singly or jointly) for amounts of ₹1 crore and below. The…

A wrong account transfer starts with a typo. RBI’s 2010 circular on electronic payments is blunt: “Being essentially credit-push in nature, responsibility for accurate input and successful credit lies with the remitting customers and the originating banks.” Destination banks credit “based solely on the beneficiary account number information.” If you type a wrong but valid…

“A savings/ current account shall be treated as inoperative, if there are no ‘customer induced transactions’ in the account for a period of over two years.” That sentence from the RBI’s instructions of 1 January 2024 is where most unclaimed deposits begin. Interest credits and bank charges do not count as activity; only something you…

On a bank’s service desk, the first week of a new month or quarter brings a familiar kind of complaint: a debit of a few hundred rupees marked “non-maintenance of AMB” or “MAB charges”, often on an account the customer had nearly forgotten. Most of these customers assume the bank can charge whatever it likes…

Meena Joshi rents a medium-sized locker at her bank’s branch in Jaipur for ₹4,000 a year plus GST. Inside are her wedding jewellery, which she values at about ₹12 lakh, her property papers and a few gold coins. Like many locker holders, she has never read the agreement she signed, and she assumes the bank…

Farida Khan, 54, a school clerk in Lucknow, tried to withdraw ₹20,000 from her savings account in August 2026 and was told at the counter that debits were blocked. Her salary had been credited two days earlier without trouble. The reason was a pending re-KYC: her account, opened in 2015, had fallen due for a…

Sunil Rao, a retired railway employee in Nagpur, died in July 2026 at 68. He left ₹9 lakh in a savings account where his wife Lata was the registered nominee, and a ₹12 lakh fixed deposit he had opened years earlier without naming anyone. His son Arun assumed the whole amount would simply go to…

Kavita runs a small catering business in Pune. On 6 October 2026 she deposits a cheque for ₹85,000 from a corporate client, dated 5 October. The next evening her bank’s SMS says the cheque has been returned: “funds insufficient”. She has the cheque, a return memo and a client who has stopped answering calls. What…

Priya, 29, a teacher in Indore, can save ₹10,000 a month. Her brother Rohan has ₹1.2 lakh sitting in his savings account. Both go to SBI on the same day in October 2026. Priya opens a 12-month recurring deposit, Rohan books a one-year fixed deposit, and both get the same 6.25% rate. A year later,…

From 1 October 2026, State Bank of India salary package account holders get only 5 free transactions a month at other banks’ ATMs, down from 10. The cap applies at all centres and counts cash withdrawals and non-financial transactions such as balance enquiries together, according to an SBI public notice listed on the bank’s service…