Recently ICICI bank which is one of the major bank in India has increased its monthly minimum balance from 10K to 50K per month which is a huge increase of the minimum balance. In India, the average salary of 90% of Indians are around Rs 25K. That means the ICICI bank is asking people to keep their 2 months of salary as a minimum balance otherwise they will charge money.
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This is actually very hard, even though someone is earning Rs 1 Lakh to 2 Lakh, keeping 50K is hard in his account. So in simple terms minimum balance means the customer has to keep that amount in his savings account. So if a month has 30 days and the minimum balance is Rs 50K, then the sum of all day should be around 15 Lakh at the end of the month. So you can keep 1 Lakh for 15 days and 0 for the next 15 days. And at the end of the month the minimum balance would cross that Rs 50K.
After the backlash, ICICI has lowered the minimum balance to be 15K per month, which is somewhat ok. But mostly people have 2 to 3 bank accounts and if all the bank start doing this monthly balance then you have to keep it in all the banks. And that's why having a nationalized bank account is necessary because they either have low minimum balance requirement or you can open no minimum balance account. With private banks, you have to have some amount with them. Then there is salary account which I feel is good to have because it's a zero balance account. So even if you have 3 bank accounts, keep one for salary, one for the normal day to day transactions and one nationalized bank. If you have 2 then you don't have to worry much.
