Reduce ICICIC bank's QAB

Indira Gandhi nationalised many banks because the banks were not providing services for the poor. She realised that if India was to grow and develop, the poor should have access to banking services. So in order to force the banks to provide services for the poor, she took the extreme step of nationalising many of the banks.







Now, banks have started to go back to their old banking for the rich only days. For example, ICICI is saying that a person has to have a Quarterly Average Balance (QAB) of Rs.5,000/- in his savings account. When many Indians are in a hand-to-mouth existence, how can a bank impose such a rule on its customers. I believe, customers are king. They should decide many of the aspects of the service industry. A poor man cannot be expected to have such a huge average balance in his savings account.







1. I request ICICI to segregate savings account into Individual Savings account (for individual persons) & Corporate Savings account (for companies and organisations). They could impose the Rs.5,000/- QAB for the Corporate Savings accounts, while for the Individual Savings account, they could reduce it to about Rs.500/-.



2. I also request ICICI not to give cheque books, etc., for the Individual Savings account holders, as this increase the cost for maintaining the account. If the person needs a cheque book, let him request for it, and for his account let the QAB be increased to Rs.1,000/-. This has been the practice with many banks such as Bank of Baroda, Indian Bank, etc.



3. I also request that the charges for not maintaining the QAB be reduced to Rs.10/- per quarter. At present the charges are Rs.750 + Rs.92 tax = Rs.842/-, which is too high.



4. I also request that ICICI bank reimburse the charges (Rs.750) that it has deducted from all its customers who have not maintained their QAB of Rs.5,000/-.



5. In future ICICI bank should not force its customers to sign / acknowledge unjust charges such as these. These charges are very high when compared to other banks not only in India, but in abroad too. For example in Malaysia, Maybank give a zero balance savings account, RHB bank gives a RM1/- savings account (which works out to Rs.12/- in Indian Rupees). And both these banks give better services compared to ICICI. They give a debit card / ATM card / Bank card (of course they charge for that, but at the same rate in which banks in India do); they also provide internet banking service free of charge for the savings accounts; they also provide bill payment, funds transfer, share markets services, mutual fund services through their banking portal. Incidentally Maybank offers bill payment to more than 400 companies / organisations. Southern Bank (now part of CIMB bank) offers the bill payment facility for even more companies. My question is: does ICICI offer so much? Then why is ICICI acting as if it is the monopoly in Indian banking? Why is it setting such huge fee structure and saying all customers have to follow it. Either we customers should boycott ICICI bank, or we should force it to know WHO IS KING!







Let us do this one step at a time. First we will tackle ICICIs QAB of Rs.5,000/-.







Please sign the petition asking ICICI to reduce the QAB (at least for individuals).







Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Hind!!