Government approved the merger of five SBI associate banks in February 2017. Later in March 2017 Bhartiya Mahila Bank was also merged. If you have account in one of the six state-run banks, then it is time to act fast. Post September 30th, 2017 Indian Financial System (IFS) codes and cheque books will become invalid for your bank account. The reason is that these state-run banks Bhartiya Mahila Bank (BMB), State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Travancore have merged with the SBI and new IFSC codes will be allotted to them.
The process of merger had been established in February of this year, when government approved five associate banks to merge with State Bank of India. After a month, the government approved even BMB to participate in the merger. The merger has helped the SBI to hold an overall asset of 29 lakh crore INR. Here is what SBI official twitter account posted on 20 Sep,2017.
We request customers of SBI’s erstwhile Associate banks and Bharatiya Mahila Bank to apply for new SBI Cheque books as soon as possible. pic.twitter.com/iWhq4xtbrn
— State Bank of India (@TheOfficialSBI) September 20, 2017
The merger while being fruitful to all, places little inconveniences to the respective banks’ customers. In preparation of this merger, the banks posted notices to all its customers to apply for SBI cheque books through ATM, mobile banking or net banking. There was also the facility to apply for the cheque book by visiting the home branches. Hence, if you had not requested the cheque book then you need to apply for it fast, since the cheque book of your original bank is now invalid. The same applies for all the post dated cheques. You need to immediately recall all the post-dated cheques and replace them with fresh cheques from SBI.
The past merger practices showed that the acquiring banks allowed the fixed deposits to run. Hopefully, here too there would be no changes in the fixed deposits.
You will have to take care of your mobile banking too and make new passwords to access your funds.
There has been no mention of ECS by the SBI. Therefore, it could safely be inferred that SBI would take care of the back-end related things. So, you can relax in this quarter. Usually when banks merge, then the acquiring bank takes care of the ECS and saves the clients from any needless hassle. This had been seen in the case of merger between IDBI bank and United Western Bank when IDBI (as the acquiring bank) made use of mapping technique for ECS.
If you have got an account with any of the listed six banks, pls contact your bank for more details.
