SBI launched `SBI Tiny no frills account’ as part of its financial inclusion program

For all nationalized banks it has become mandatory to rope into RBI’s `Financial Inclusion Programme` as four hundred plus million population that is still unbanked.

The State Bank of India with over sixteen thousand four hundred plus branches has become leader by taking up this challenge by introducing `SBI Tiny no frills account` for the urban slum communities & Rural India. In this new account there is no need of `KYC` documents and the account can be opened with a zero balance. In this account one can deposit or withdraw from Rs.10/- to Rs.10,000/- the upper limit for this account is Rs.50,000/-. Bank has various loan schemes to cater different needs of rural farmers and urban slum based persons.

The SBI Tiny also provide facility for the local poor NGOs to become Customer Service Providers (CSPs) that work like a local branch at each slum dweller/villagers` doorstep in the community. For this NGO get some percentage benefits as well as it helps their socio-economic empowerment objectives. From this RBI will be benefited as it is making this database for the (Unique Identity Number) UID scheme of the Government of India.

Laxmibhai at one of the SBI Tiny Centers said, ``I rob some money from my husband at night and come and save it in our SBI Tiny account in the morning, this way I can manage our house`s essentials through the entire month and do not need to get loans at the end of each month``.

This scheme is being strongly promoted by Don Bosco Rehabilitation and Research, Matunga (R&D), for various poor NGOs, in rural areas, Out of our institutions ex-street boys and urban slum communities. The R&D provided its support for such savings to over one million marginalized in various communities of Maharashtra.

The R&D has been conducting various training workshops in rural Maharashtra viz. Yewla, Nagar, Amravati, Beed, Lonavla, Pune and now it has started networking with social action NGOs in Jharkhand and Uttaranchal. The aim of this unique scheme is to cover as many of the poor unbanked population in the country.