ICICI Bank raises savings a/c minimum balance limit

The country's largest private sector lender ICICI Bank on Wednesday increased the limit of minimum quarterly balance to be maintained in its savings account. The bank said it has doubled the minimum quarterly balance to be maintained in its savings accounts to Rs 10,000. The reason it gave is the cost of infrastructure has increased with the expansion of service offerings for its customers.

The bank's Executive Director V Vaidyanathan told the media from Mumbai that the new minimum balance requirement, will be effective from July 1, and is not applicable to the salary, no-frills and senior citizen accounts.

He added the salary and no-frills accounts do not require minimum balance to be maintained, while minimum levels for senior citizen accounts remain untouched at current levels.

Vaidyanathan said for over 10 years the bank has been maintaining the minimum balance at Rs 5,000 and now it has become necessary to revise it in view of the rise in the number of services customers were being offered.

"There has been a sharp increase in the number of customers, branches and ATMs, while the bank timings have also been increased... This required us to revise the minimum quarterly balance," Vaidyanathan said.

Most of the foreign banks operating in the country are already having a minimum quarterly balance of Rs 10,000 for savings accounts, though some of the domestic private banks such as HDFC Bank have it at Rs 5,000.

Whereas, public sector banks have a much lower minimum balance, mostly ranging from Rs 500-1,000 per savings account.

When the second largest private sector lender HDFC Bank, was inquired about their plans of increasing minimum balance companies spokesperson said, "There are no such plans at this moment."