Public sector lender Punjab National Bank said that it earned over Rs 645 crore during the financial year 2021-22 through ATM transaction charges imposed on customers.
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Making Money From Penalties On Customers
Its revenue from ATM transaction charges stood at Rs 645.67 crore, it said in response to an application seeking information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
The country’s second largest lender made Rs 239.09 crore in the form of penalty imposed on customers who failed to maintain minimum or quarterly/monthly average balance in their accounts.
It collected the amount from 8,518,953 accounts during FY22.
Zero Balance Accounts Increasing
It also said there were 67,637,918 zero balance accounts with the bank as of March 31, 2022.
For the last four financial years from 2018-19 to 2021-22, the number of zero balance accounts in PNB have gone up steadily.
As of March 31, 2019, there were 28,203,379 zero balance accounts at PNB, which increased to 30,583,184 by the end of March 2020 and further to 59,496,731 as of March 31, 2020.
Profit Decline
In other news, last week the bank had reported a 66 per cent decline in standalone net profit at Rs 202 crore.
This can be attributed to higher amounts parked towards provisioning, even as the NPA levels declined.
Net Profit
It had posted a net profit of Rs 586 crore in the same quarter a year ago.
For the full fiscal 2021-22, standalone net profit rose to Rs 3,456.96 crore as against Rs 2,021.62 crore in FY21, the bank said.
Asset Quality
The asset quality improved as gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) fell to 11.78 per cent of the gross advances as of March 2022, from 14.12 per cent a year ago.
Net NPAs or bad loans also dropped to 4.8 per cent from 5.73 per cent.