• A Savings Account is an interest-bearing deposit account held at a bank that provides low to modest interest rate.
• Saving account comes with Debit/ATM Card, Cheque Book and Internet Banking and a Pass Book (if specifically requested for).
• People opening savings accounts in various banks (public, private or co-operative) have to mandatorily maintain a certain money threshold in their saving accounts. This is called as Minimum Account Balance (MAB). When MAB falls below the required threshold amount, the bank generally levies a penalty on the account holder.
• Please note that banks charge penalty on non-maintenance of MAB which is calculated as a monthly average balance over a period of time and not actually a minimum balance at point in time.
• Mathematically speaking, MAB calculated by taking the sum of all end of the day closing balances in your savings account and dividing that by the number of days in that month (including holidays).
• As a thumb rule, even if you don’t maintain the daily minimum balance but maintain the MAB, then you won’t be penalized.
• The penalty for non-maintenance of MAB varies bank by bank and also varies by segment of population viz. metro / urban, semi urban and rural.
• Please note that one can open special category saving accounts with banks that come without MAB . These include:
  1. Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana Accounts – this is a basic savings account primarily meant for poorer sections of society to encourage them to start saving without any burden of charges or fees.
  2. Corporate Salary Accounts – savings accounts provided to salaried corporate employees so long as pre-determined salary credit arrives every month
  3. Minor Savings Account – to inculcate the savings habit in kids
• All the special category savings account do come with Debit/ATM Card, cheque book and pass book.
• Important to note that if bank identifies that the customer has any other Savings Bank Account, the Basic Savings Account opened with Bank will be compulsorily closed.
• In order to provide safety net to the saving bank holders, a significant number of who are small account holders, the Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC), a subsidiary of Reserve Bank of India, insures all bank deposits, such as saving, fixed, current, Recurring deposit for up to the limit of Rs. 100,000 of each deposit in a bank.

Savings Account by Banks