State Bank of India faces customers ire over minimum balance

Hyderabad: The State Bank of India faced wrath for collecting huge amounts as fines from account holders for not maintaining minimum balance. 

The furore forced the bank to reduce the penalty slab. But SBI is not the only bank charging huge penalties. From the private sector, HDFC bank collected ' 590.8 crore, Axis Bank Rs 530.1 crore and ICICI bank Rs 317.6 crore as penalty during 2017-18. Apart from these three, eight other banks collected about Rs 100 crore each from customers. 

Together, three private and 21 public sector banks squeezed Rs 4,990 crore as penalty for the 2017-18 financial years. The revenue collected by the banks under the category of fine has doubled compared to the revenue in 2014-15. 

According to the information subjected to the government of India, the fine amount collected by banks in 2014-15 was Rs 2084 crore, it increased to Rs 2136 crore in 2015-16, further to Rs 2319 crore. However in 2017-18 , it doubled to Rs 4990, SBI introduced its penal charges in 2017-18 and  in the every first year it collected Rs 2433.9 Crore as fine.  

Mr D. Rakesh Reddy, founder of factly  an independent information portal said ,” A penalty of Rs 11528 crore was  collected in four years.