Minimum Balance Penalties by Bank

The common misreading is that the penalty is a flat fee. It is not. Under RBI rules it must be proportionate to how far short you fell. A shortfall of ₹100 and a shortfall of ₹9,000 cannot attract the same charge.

What are the minimum balance penalties at each bank?

Below is what we could verify from each bank’s own published pages, checked on 7 September 2026. Where a bank’s fee schedule is published only as a PDF or rendered by scripts we could not open, we say so rather than guess.

We deliberately left the private bank figures blank. Their fee schedules are published, but as PDFs or script-rendered tables that did not return usable text. Publishing a remembered number for a charge that comes out of your account would be worse than publishing nothing. Ask your branch for the current Schedule of Charges, or open the PDF linked from the bank’s own service charges page. It is a legally required disclosure and they must give it to you.

What does the RBI actually allow a bank to charge?

The governing circular is RBI/2014-15/308, DBR.Dir.BC.No.47/13.03.00/2014-15, dated 20 November 2014, effective from 1 April 2015. It sets six conditions. They are the most useful thing on this page, because they apply to every bank.

1. The bank must tell you when your balance falls short, by SMS, email or letter.
2. It must then allow a reasonable period before charging. That period cannot be less than one month from the date of notice.
3. The penal charge policy must be approved by the bank’s Board.
4. The charge must be directly proportionate to the shortfall. Banks use a fixed percentage of the gap between the required and actual balance, in slabs.
5. The charge must be reasonable and not out of line with the average cost of providing the service.
6. Your balance must not go negative purely because of the penal charge.

A separate circular, RBI/2013-14/580 dated 6 May 2014, bars banks from levying non-maintenance charges on any inoperative account. If a dormant account has been bleeding charges for years, that is the provision to quote.

How is the average balance calculated, and why does it catch people out?

This is where most disputes start. Banks do not check your balance on one day. They add up the closing balance for every day in the period and divide by the number of days.

So a single large withdrawal early in the month hurts far more than the same withdrawal on the 29th. If your required monthly average is ₹10,000 and you drop to zero for twenty days, your average is roughly ₹3,300 even if the money came back. You are short by ₹6,700, and the charge is set on that gap.

The three acronyms also mean different things. MAB and AMB are monthly average balance, computed over one month. AQB is average quarterly balance, computed over three months. A quarterly requirement is easier to meet, because one strong month can carry two weak ones. Check which one your account uses before you plan around it.

What are the exceptions the bank will not volunteer?

Several account types carry no minimum balance requirement at all, by regulation or by design.

What should you do if you have been charged?

Start with the notice. Under the RBI conditions, the bank had to warn you and wait at least a month. If no SMS, email or letter reached you, the charge is defective on process. Write to the branch and ask for the date and mode of the notice.

Next check proportionality. A flat charge that ignores the size of your shortfall does not meet condition four. Ask the bank for the slab structure it applied and the shortfall it computed.

If the reply is unsatisfactory, or none comes in 30 days, escalate to the RBI Ombudsman. It is free and it is online. Our guide to the banking ombudsman sets out the steps and what to attach.