New Delhi: State Bank of India (SBI) expects to collect Rs 2,000 crore as penalty on savings bank accounts which have failed to maintain a minimum balance, a sum which may be used to partly cover the costs incurred on the linking of accounts with Aadhaar.
The recent directive of the government to link all savings bank accounts with Aadhaar by December 31 was a “very costly affair” as lenders were already facing high costs in maintaining such accounts and complying with the KYC (know your customer) requirement, says SBI Managing Director Rajnish Kumar.
To recover such costs, including the lender’s costs on ATMs and business correspondents, the bank expects to realise over Rs 2,000 crore in the current fiscal from account holders as penalty for failing to maintain minimum balance in their savings accounts, he said.
“Maintaining savings bank accounts and complying with KYC requirement is not an easy task. Now the government has said that you have to link Aadhaar to each and every account by December 31. So I have to look at (SBI’s) 40 crore (savings bank) accounts and it is a very costly affair,” he told IANS.
According to the government’s mandate, all existing bank account holders will have to submit Aadhaar card numbers to banks by December 31 this year, failing which the accounts will become invalid.
Kumar said that the process would add to the costs of banks as it involves a process and making changes in the IT-backend as well.
“It (Aadhaar linking) is a costly affair because you have to contact the customer, you have to do the process, you have to make changes in IT. There are costs associated with savings bank accounts,” he said.
The largest public lender said it also invests heavily in technology requirement to take care of the transactions made in the savings bank accounts.
