The banks have started giving their own version of asking for more money towards locker charges and deposit.
If any of you has received a stern letter from your bank to pay more to retain the locker facility and you were piqued at the lack of transparency about the revised deposit and annual charges, the banks are offering some explanation: they pay 3% interest on deposit, which will take care of the annual payment towards the locker charges.
DNA had published a report on the increased charges for locker on November 16. The banks have started giving their own version of asking for more money towards locker charges and deposit.
Syndicate Bank, which made the first move in revising the charges, says the lockers are expensive to maintain. Many locker owners take out everything when they shift base to other cities but keep the locker empty for long time. They do not pay the annual charges. They do not surrender the locker and take back their deposit. In such cases, a senior bank official says, it has to break open the locker to put a new container or fix it with new locking system.
Corporation Bank officials have a different version. They say the bank pays interest towards the deposit. Say, if the deposit for a large locker is `19,000, this sum will fetch an interest equivalent to the annual charges payable by the locker holder per annum, which will be adjusted towards the annual charges and the differential sum will be deposited in the depositor’s account.
Different rates
The banks have different rates for different dimensions of lockers for different categories of customers. Customers in metro cities will end up enhancing their deposits from Rs3,000 to Rs10,000 for small lockers. For large and very large lockers, they have to pay not less than Rs15,000 to Rs19,000 as deposits. The same rates apply to urban customers. In semi-urban and rural areas, the rates are low, depending on the size of the lockers. The new rates will come into force from January 1, 2012.
But if you think that is the end, it is not. Even the annual rent has been hiked from `300 to `600 for small lockers; from Rs500 to Rs1,110 for medium lockers; from Rs900 to Rs1,900 for large lockers; and Rs1,500 to Rs2,500 for very large lockers per annum.
According to the officials of Syndicate Bank, the rates have been increased following a directive from the RBI with an advice to the Indian Banks’ Association. This means that all the public-sector banks will increase the charges on a pan-India basis.
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