2 min read time.

NRI are giving best business to all Indian banks, just by sending foreign currency deposits to FCNR, NRE or NRO accounts.

For any bank, One NRI account may be equal to 50 normal bank accounts business profit reputation etc.

Irrespective of amount you have in NRI account, having the account with a bank is a great customer base. NRIs believing and keeping money with you is a great asset to the bank.

But some banks are giving trouble and headache to NRI account holders from the creating to maintenance in every stage. They have to respect and give simple easy process to make NRIs happy with less burden.

See the following sample issues and may be solutions

(1) FACTA - US India Govt agreement - reporting to IRS/ US govt by all Indian banks head office. This should be simple online process.

If head office or local branch could able to give the same report to NRI, they can use that numbers easily in IRS taxes. Like American company is giving W2 numbers to Employee and also reporting same numbers to IRS US Govt.

If any NRI is having more than 10K dollars equal amount in Indian bank account or sum of all the accounts, they should report to IRS by FBAR.

The same equal reports are the following example. NRI need every JAN or FEB (current year 2021) from bank is :

Reports : For each account
1. What are the interests total, earned from Jan 1 to Dec 31. (previous year 2020)
2. What is the year ending balance on Dec 31, 2020 (at the end of previous year)

Remember Indian bank system follows March/ Apr 2020 to March/ Apr 2021 period. But US is using Jan 2020 to Dec 2020.

(2) KYC :

For KYC, what bank need extra specific info from NRI from last year? Everything is same like last they provided. Like same passport, address, everything is same.

Please make the process simple and less headache to the customer. You may have 100 rules and may have 100 solutions also if we have will.

It should be online, simple process.

(3) Address change - It should be easy and simple. Like just send local internet or electricity or water bill by email to customer service or website upload.

(4) Dormant Account make active - As best customer service practice, bank could make it active immediately by contacting by email or phone and request any missing details to send by email or upload to website.

Please do not hide the accounts from online website. Show them in grey color and show all amounts, balances, transactions.

You can restrict the operations on that. Like bill payment, deposit, withdraw. Ex: Karur bank, Union/ Corp bank hiding the accounts.

(5) 2 yrs active transactions

NRIs may not have anything to do transactions, because they are not local.

Bank should have a easy way to verify it, just by email reply or WhatsApp message and put that as proof. OR just transfer 1 rupee if they have multiple accounts or something by taking their permission or explaining any other simple process.

Bank should not force NRI to do transaction if they don't need any payment just to maintain the account.

NRI may have multiple individual bank accounts based on various needs like interest rate, online payments, good customer service, walkable distance etc. So they can't able to do transaction from every account.

(6) Best Customer Service :

A* You can always make a request to head office, for the services, which are not available currently in your bank but available in other banks. Start as service improvement, at least for NRIs initially. Later that service may be good for others, in the long run.

B* Always better to be in contact at least one guy like BM, DBM or senior account, about deactivation details 1 month before and after that also by WhatsApp or email. At least one of them available even other folks on job transfer or on vacation leave. At least 2 senior employees should be in contact with customer to reduce burden on BM.

When user login to the website, they should able to see the contact details like phone email and photo of Branch, BM and Asst BM. Branch email is useful to see other staff when BM or ABM on vacation or transfer.

C* NRIs may not need Debit cards at all by paying yearly charges. So you can reduce fees burden and give for free.

D* Make the process, OTP way of email and phone message, for security payments or communication. If phone is not working then they can check email while they are in India or USA.

E* Do not waste NRI account money for sending registered post for communication, you have free email and WhatsApp for question and answer.

F* Banks should always send quarterly FCNR, NRE, NRO deposit rates with comparing other bank rates and greeting by email continuously to the customer to remind them about changes of interest, bank, persons (like New BM) wise from branch level, to keep confidence and retain accounts with customer.

NRIs may be getting bank head office emails, but won't look at them. Even local branch BM mails also, but you are in personal contact at least, whether customer read it or not.

G* From bank, you guys have to give tips about keeping making activation accounts easy way, like other banks helping.

Because NRI may not have transactions at all even for 2 years. if you guys give trouble then NRI have to close the account and keep account with just one bank.

H* From bank, you guys have to tell how easy to use bill payment system, compared to other banks.

How easy to pay electricity bill like Southern or Central power Distribution (local available company). Because this is useful to make active payment to keep account active.

I* All banks should discuss and make treaty like India US govt made about tax. The purpose of this treaty is if someone not interested in one bank and would like to move to another existing bank, transfer all the accounts money into the new interested bank account without giving any trouble by taking written email permission.

J* There should be a direct easy free way of depositing FCNR checks (money amount) directly from US bank to India bank FCNR account without converting in to rupees.

Note :

Please let us know if you got any more issues than mentioned in this article. So that we can include all the issues here.

We will try to send this to banks customer service like hdfc, icici, union bank, karur, sbi etc.

Even you can send to your own local bank, issues may be same for all banks.

Not sure whether they will respond and correct them or not, at least we will have issues at one place for future reference.

Even we can send to our local branch manager also for helping and send request as improvements with that issues.

Please feel free to correct any mistakes or English.   Note : ఎవరు ఏ విషయాలు చెప్పినా, అది వారి వ్యక్తిగత అభిప్రాయమో లేక అనుభవమో లేక పెద్దల నుంచి విన్నవో. అందరూ ఏకీభవించాలని లేదు. మీ యోచనతో లేదా పెద్దల సలహాలతో, మంచి చెడు నిర్ణయించుకొనగలరు. Whatever you are reading here is their opinion or experience or heard from elders. Everyone may not agree. Please consult your elders and decide whether it is good or bad.
ఆత్మ వంచన కాపీ వద్దు, ఫార్వార్డ్ ముద్దు. స్వార్థం నిర్లక్ష్యం వదిలి, భారతీయ విలువల, మంచిని పంచిన పెంచిన పుణ్యం.
మా సామాజిక చైతన్య సమాచారం లో తప్పులు ఉంటే మన్నించి, బాధ్యత గల పౌరునిగా, మంచిని పెంచే, ఆదర్శ వ్యక్తి గా, సరిచేసి సూచించగలరు.
మాతృమూర్తి మాతృభాషను గౌరవించి, తెలుగు లో సొంతం గా 2 మాటలు రాయడం, కనీసం మమ్మల్ని తిట్టేందుకు అయినా. ధర్మాన్ని రక్షించిన, అది మనల్ని కాపాడుతుంది.