Bank Reviews

as of 2026-09-06 · DICGC — A Guide to Deposit Insurance · verified

Every bank we review, and what we hold on it

Loan figures from our rate tables, as of 17 September 2026, checked individually against each lender’s rate page; deposit figures as of 2 October 2026. HDFC Bank’s figures were checked against its own rate card on 26 August 2026. All loan rates are advertised floors, not offers. Four rows above are card issuers in our data: we hold their card catalogue and no deposit or loan rates, so no rate-based rating is computed for them. Five further institutions we review are not banks — LIC Housing Finance, Bajaj Housing Finance and Tata Capital Housing are housing finance companies, Bajaj Finserv is an NBFC, and SBI Card is a separate listed company from State Bank of India.

How each bank rating is weighted

Weights are fixed and published in full on our methodology page. A component we cannot compute is dropped, and the remaining weights are rescaled. Half a percentage point of gap costs one rating point.

Is there a best bank in India, or does the question not work?

The question assumes banks differ on safety. Up to ₹5,00,000 they do not. The DICGC insures every depositor in every licensed bank for that amount. It covers principal and interest together. It applies per bank, not per branch and not per account. Five accounts at one bank share one limit. Two banks give you two limits.

So under the cap, choosing a bank is a pricing decision. Above it, splitting the money across banks does more for you than picking a bigger name.

That also explains our deposit table. The banks paying most are small finance banks. Suryoday pays 8.25% to a general depositor on a deposit of exactly 5 years, and Shivalik, Unity Small Finance Bank and Jana pay 8.00%. State Bank of India pays 6.45%. That is 1.80 points of extra yield. Take the rate, and size the deposit to the cover.

How we rate a bank, and what the rating cannot see

Every score on this site is arithmetic over a dated rate table. No editorial preference enters it. Change a rate and the score moves on its own. Anyone can recompute it from the published formula.

Why we score the gap, not the rank

Rank hides magnitude. Being tenth of twelve sounds damning. It means little if the whole field sits inside 0.6 percentage points. So we score the distance from the best rate we track. Half a point of gap costs one rating point. That distance is what reaches your EMI.

A bank is never marked down for a product it does not sell. Hold no personal loan rate for it, and that component is dropped and the rest rescaled. Absence of data is not evidence of a bad product.

What the score deliberately leaves out

It does not measure branch service, app uptime, call-centre waits, or how fast a bank reverses a fraudulent debit. Those matter enormously. We hold no defensible data on them. A service score we cannot source would be the same error as inventing a rate.

It also cannot see a rate card we have not verified. The loan ceilings in our tables are now checked against each lender’s own rate page, and some sit far above what published comparisons show — HDFC Bank’s own card quotes up to 13.20% on a home loan. Where a figure is disputed we say so on the review, rather than turning it into a strength.

Why the advertised rate is almost never the rate you are offered

Every rate on this page is a floor. It is the price for the strongest applicant a bank will accept. Your quote depends on your credit band, income stability and employer category. The gap between credit bands can easily exceed the gap between two lenders.

The RBI does constrain what happens next. On a floating retail loan priced off an external benchmark, the rate must reset at least once every three months. The benchmark must be the policy repo rate or an FBIL Treasury bill yield. The credit risk premium can change only if your credit assessment changes substantially, and only as the loan contract sets out.

Housing finance companies sit outside that rule. They price off an internal reference rate instead. Cuts reach those borrowers more slowly. That is why every row in our tables labels the institution type.

What separates two banks once the rate is the same

Fees, and whether the bank quotes them with tax. A processing fee is a service, so 18% GST applies on top of the advertised figure. A 0.35% fee on a ₹50 lakh loan is ₹17,500 before tax and ₹20,650 after it. Almost no comparison page adds that step.

Then the recurring drip: minimum balance penalties, locker rent, debit card annual fees. Each is small. Together they are what a salary account holder actually pays.

Finally, the exit. If a bank will not resolve a complaint, you escalate to the RBI ombudsman through the portal at cms.rbi.org.in. It runs a contact centre on 14448, in English, Hindi and ten regional languages. Every bank here sits inside that scheme. The backstop is uniform, so it is not a reason to prefer one bank. It is the reason a bad outcome is recoverable.