SBI waives minimum balance requirement in savings accounts, cuts interest rate to 3%

State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday also rationalised interest rate on all savings bank accounts to a flat 3 per cent. The move is likely to impact around 44.51 crore account holders of the public sector lender.

A view of State Bank of India (SBI) bank branch and ATM in Bangalore, India. (file photo, source: Bloomberg)

India’s largest public-sector lender State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday scrapped the minimum balance requirement on all savings bank accounts.

This apart, the bank also rationalised interest rate on all savings bank accounts to a flat 3 per cent. The move is likely to impact around 44.51 crore account holders of the public sector lender.

Along with these measures, SBI said that it has also waived SMS charges, which will provide a significant relief to all its customers.

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“Bank has also rationalised interest rate on SB Account to a flat 3 % p.a. for all buckets,” SBI said in a statement.

Till now, the interest rate on savings accounts was 3.25 per cent for deposits up to Rs 1 lakh, and 3 per cent for deposits above Rs 1 lakh.

“The charges on maintaining AMB (Average Monthly Balance) are now waived off on all 44.51 crore SBI savings bank accounts,” the bank said.

Customers of SBI had to maintain an average monthly balance of Rs 3,000, Rs 2,000 and Rs 1,000 in metro, semi-urban and rural areas respectively, failing which they used to levy a penalty of Rs 5 to Rs 15 plus taxes.

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Earlier in the day, the bank also announced that it has reduced its marginal cost of fund-based lending rate (MCLR) by up to 15 basis points across various tenors, effective March 10.

(with PTI inputs)

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