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Banks kickstarted the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) for financial inclusion by going on an account opening spree across the country.
The country’s largest lender, State Bank of India, opened close to 20 lakh accounts, while the largest private sector bank, ICICI Bank, opened one lakh savings bank deposit accounts. ICICI Bank opened accounts in a special drive at 1,100 camps across 3,700 branches.
Public sector lender IDBI Bank opened more than 3.62 lakh basic savings accounts under this plan, as against the target of two lakh accounts. It held camps at more than 6,800 locations.
Under the PMJDY plan, each account holder is being provided with a passbook and a RuPay Debit/ATM card which carries free accident insurance cover for ₹1 lakh and an overdraft facility of up to ₹5,000.
SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya said: “Banks are fully geared up to universalise banking access and financial inclusion under the PMJDY. The use of debit cards will allow the unbanked to start building a transaction history, which can be a decisive step in initiating them towards financial inclusion. This will also help the banks prepare for better product designing and targeting.”
Senior officials are helming the PMJDY campaign in various banks. Business correspondents of some banks also participated in the camps conducted at bank branches in villages and other small regions.
Challenges and changesAccording to reports, apart from the problems in reaching out to unbanked people in the hinterland, banks have to incur an annual maintenance of about ₹100 per account. Further, public sector banks together had to set up 60,000 camps to reach about one crore new basic deposit or no-frills accounts. The account opening procedures were eased by the RBI to facilitate the government scheme.
A small/basic account is opened on the basis of a self-attested photograph with a signature/thumb impression of the customer in the presence of a bank official.
Chanda Kochhar, MD and CEO, ICICI Bank, said, “Today through our network, we cover approximately 15,600 villages and have brought more than 18.5 million unbanked people into the banking fold. We aim to open 2.5 million accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, thereby taking the total number of accounts under our financial inclusion program to more than 20 million.”
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