Intercontinental Bank has raised its minimum savings deposits from N1, 000 to N10, 000.

Minimum savings deposit is the amount savings customers must leave in their account.

This is happening when financial meltdown is hitting hard on the citizenry leaving them with little or no amount of money to keep aside as deposits.

The bank, last week sent text messages to its customers imploring those whose minimum accounts deposits are below N10, 000 to increase their account balance to N10, 000 before March 31, 2009 otherwise the accounts will become dormant.

According to the message, “Dear Customer, for better service, please be advised that the new savings account minimum balance is now N10, 000. Kindly increase your balance by March 31, 2009.”

Findings show that customers are now worried as those who may not be able to  meet up the minimum balance of N10, 000 are likely to forfeit  their bank account. The bank may also lose this category of customers.

This is however strange to the industry as findings show that majority of the banks still maintain their minimum balance not minding the effect of the financial meltdown on the industry.

BusinessWorld investigations reveal that First City Monument Bank (FCMB) still maintains N1, 000 minimum savings account balances. Sterling Bank also maintain N1, 000, UBA also maintain N1, 000, Skye Bank N1, 000, Access Bank N1, 000, Wema Bank N500 and Zenith Bank zero balance.

 There is however the fear that with Intercontinental Bank blazing the trial of increasing minimum deposits, even during financial crunch, other banks are likely to follow suit thereby sending majority of bank customers that cannot afford a particular amount of money lying in the bank when they have issues at hand out of the banking industry.

When this happens, the perennial efforts of financial authorities to decrease the amount of money outside the banking industry may be frustrated.