For some of you who got into the habit of banking on Sundays, it could be time to change the schedule.
Because some new private banks have started closing down Sunday branches, after having launched it with much fanfaronade some years back.
There are two reasons being cited for this: lack of customers on Sundays and the problem of clearing instruments.
Besides, the Sunday business does not seem to justify the cost of keeping the branches open. UTI Bank has decided to stop Sunday banking in all its branches across the country citing lower business volumes.
A senior UTI Bank official said very few transactions take place on a Sunday. "The average account openings on a Sunday for the bank is only at around 100 compared with 3,000 on week days. Besides, if we close the Sunday banking system, we can also save costs as the overheads come down by 7-10 per cent. There were also problems of cheque clearings as a Sunday branch has to be closed on some other day of the week," he said.
ICICI Bank, too, has stopped offering Sunday banking for sometime now. Says ICICI Bank's joint general manager (head of retail channel and liability group) Amitabh Chaturvedi, "The number of customers on a Sunday is also less. Besides, the corporate customers get affected as a Sunday branch needs to be closed on some other day. All branches which were opened on Sunday were on a different server and that led to some complications in regard to the speed of transactions and clearing."
For those banks which operate Sunday branches, their data centre does not get rest. The data centre also requires maintenance, upgradation, etc which is not possible if all the centres are not closed on the same day, points out another banker.
However, some of the foreign banks continue to have Sunday banking. Says StanChart's regional head-consumer banking, India, Vishu Ramchandran, "We had expected lower transactions on a Sunday and the weekend banking was designed in that way. In every city, we have one branch doing 24-hour banking. More number of people come in for consultation and queries on Sundays."
The focus continues to be on residential areas. HDFC bank's country head-marketing, retail lending and branch banking, Neeraj Swaroop, feels that more residential a locality, greater is the relevance of Sunday banking.
"The transactions in these branches ranges from 75 to 125 per cent depending on the locality. Customers also come in for locker visits and account-related queries on Sundays," he says. He, however, acknowledges that the high value clearing becomes a problem. "We have a large network of branches and the customers can go to other branches in the vicinity and deposit the cheque there," he says.
The advent of electronic channels has lowered the load on branches in the last one year. The relevance of branches as a channel has come down as customers are moving towards the non-branch channels. Over 90 per cent of cash withdrawals are through automated teller machines. The other channels such as phone banking and Internet banking have also picked up.
