State Bank of India (SBI) charges for non-maintenance of minimum balance unfair

According to financial ministry data, the SBI collected Rs 24.34 billion for the financial year 2017 in penalty on non-maintenance of minimum balance alone.

Finance News: The State Bank of India’s (SBI’s) charges for the non-maintenance of minimum balance were unreasonable, a report by a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay has said.

The SBI started charging fees for non-maintenance of minimum balance from April 2017, after a gap of five years, the monthly fees ranged between Rs 20 and Rs 100 till September 2017 and were later slashed in October last year. According to financial ministry data, the SBI collected Rs 24.34 billion for the financial year 2017 in penalty on non-maintenance of minimum balance alone.

SBI Minimum Balance Penalty

Later on, the bank slashed these charges by nearly 80 per cent in April 2018, and the charges currently range from Rs 5-15.

The public sector lender had earlier said that only 60 per cent of its accounts were subject to these charges. It also said that people should convert their accounts in Basic Savings and Basic Deposit Accounts to avoid penalty for non-maintenance of balance.

“For April 2017, the SBI recovered Rs 2.35 billion as penalty from only 38.9 million of the 255 million savings bank accounts in question for not maintaining minimum monthly average...continue balance

---

News Source: BS

From cheating banks to faking identity, Aadhaar frauds peak in 2018

At a recent court hearing, UIDAI admitted that 6% of Aadhaar authentication requests using fingerprints transactions are known to fail.

Finance News India : In January 2018, eight persons were arrested in Chandigarh for purchasing expensive mobile phones with fraudulent loans secured using fake Aadhaar cards. The accused, among whom were former bankers and employees of a finance company, had placed their own photographs on others’ Aadhaar cards to secure bank loans, and were booked for cheating, fraud, forgery and criminal conspiracy under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.

This is just one among the 73 incidents of misuse of the Unique Identity Authority of India’s (UIDAI) Aadhaar programme that have been reported in the English-language media so far this year (up to May 7, 2018). This averages nearly four incidents each week, as per a new database created by independent researchers Anmol Somanchi and Vipul Paikra.

Of these, 52 cases involved fake or forged Aadhaar numbers–coming up with entirely new Aadhaar enrolment based on fake details, or forging existing cards by replacing certain details like photographs–and 21 involved Aadhaar-related banking frauds.

In the six years since the launch of the Aadhaar programme in September 2011, 164 cases of forged or fake Aadhaar numbers and Aadhaar-related banking frauds have been reported in the English-language media, the database noted. These include 123 cases of fake or forged Aadhaar numbers or cards and 41 cases of Aadhaar-related banking fraud.

“This database does not include the whole gamut of reported incidents of Aadhaar-related fraud and forgery,” Somanchi told IndiaSpend. “We had initially included Hindi reports and found more such incidents. However, since we couldn’t include all other regional languages we restricted the database to English news reports.”

Several attempts to reach out to the UIDAI for comment on the findings of the database met with no response. On April 30, 2018, IndiaSpend reached out to the office of the chief executive officer of UIDAI via email. On May 2, 2018, we reached out again and were told by the communications team that UIDAI would get back to us. On May 3, 2018, IndiaSpend reached out a third time, telephonically. On May 8, 2018, we sent out a third email.

The story will be updated with the Authority’s response when we receive one.

Read More on → Aadhaar Frauds