Women's Accounts ...And The Bundling Effect- Femina

Deepa Gopalan
ET Intelligence Group

To serve the varied needs of working women, banks have begun offering innovative products. Essentially, these are merely various products that are put into a single basket to make things convenient for a working woman. These products are also available individually, but the likelihood of a person buying all of them would be lower.

Citibank's women's account, for example, has several components - a savings account, a credit card, discounts on loans and an account for your child. While the package sounds attractive on the whole, you must look at each of the components and check if you really need them.

Start with the savings account. The women's account offers a savings account that requires you to maintain a minimum average daily balance of Rs 10,000, unlike Citibank's other accounts, where the minimum balance required is Rs 1 lakh.

With other Citibank accounts with a balance of less than Rs 1 lakh, the customer is not entitled to transact through the branch directly. He will be allowed to avail services only through phone banking or Net banking. However, this condition is relaxed for women and they need to maintain only Rs 10,000 to make use of branch facilities. Having said that, this minimum balance also seems on the higher side, as the limit is far smaller for a lot of other banks.

Continued...

1|2|3|Next >>