Banks to remain closed for five consecutive days this month.
Starting from October 21, banks will be closed till October 25 on account of Audha Puja, Vijhaya Dashami festivals and fourth Saturday on October 24. Whenever there have been continuous holidays in the past, the Reserve Bank of India used to intervene, and direct the banks to have at least one working day in between. In the present scenario, i.e. on the eve of Dasara, now banks are waiting for the direction from RBI, as to how to go about. But, majority of the banks have been advising customers to withdraw the necessary amounts in advance to avoid the inconvenience.
Customers are also advised to plan their banking transactions well in advance as for the five days between October 21 and October 25. For banks, coming together of so many consecutive off days is rare and would significantly impact clearance of a large number of cheques, loan procedures and other banking operations. Experts claim that due to several offs in a row, cheques’ clearance worth around Rs 1500 crore would get stuck on a daily basis in Hyderabad itself. “The impact would be felt across the states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, as cheques worth more than Rs 55,000 crore would get stalled during this five day off period,” said an official from the clearing department of a leading government bank. The biggest challenge would be ensuring smooth cash dispensing across the hundreds of ATMs in the city during the off period. Though most banks have outsourced the refilling part of their ATMs, the alert to refill them and trace actual status of amount left inside the ATM machine is processed by the banks’ server. During offs, some problems are often experienced at the coordination end of the bank and the outsourced agency.
The ATM incharge of a popular private bank said, “We ensure that ATMs are refilled even on off days. But when so many consecutive offs occur, attendance is bound to decrease even at the agencies’ front. This affects regular refilling of ATMs.” He said that it is often because of panic among people that consecutive offs result in sudden surge in demand and depleting of ATM cash reserves. It is estimated that the daily average withdrawal from an ATM varies between Rs 10-15 lakh. During continuous offs, banks mostly try to replenish ATMs in full capacity to prevent their exhaustion. “We normally have records of footfall at each ATM centre. If we expect 100 withdrawals per day, we tend to refill ATMs with double the required amount during offs,” said a bank official.
As a preventive measure, banks mostly give prior permission to the replenishment agencies to draw cash from their safekeeping vault during emergency to refill ATMs without any delay. Some also increase the frequency of reloading the ATMs during continuous offs.
