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This is a must see for all Armed Forces Personnel and their families and dependents. It opened my eyes. How banks can help us and our men has been very well explained by Lt Gen Vinod Vashisht (R) methodically. He has dwelt on Sparsh and DSP extensively.
A request to all faujis. If you cannot see it, ask your wife to see it. Send it to all your unit types, course mates and your regimental mates and centres.
Dear Shankar,
Let me put on record the extremely poor experience that I’ve had with State Bank of India. As you know you and I were commissioned on 17 Dec 1977. I joined my unit in Patiala and opened an account with State Bank of Patiala. Everything was working fine and I got services as was available in any bank. Then came ITeisation. And services of SBOP were at par with any other bank. Later this bank was merged with State Bank of India.
In the same time frame I retired and invested a substantial part of my retirement funds with SBI, Kandhari Complex, Patiala where my account was transferred from State Bank of Patiala.
And then my cup of woes started.
One fine day my net banking facilities of SBI stopped! Over the next few months I alongwith the manager of the bank tried our level best to restore normal netbanking of my account to include YONO facilities in my account. As per inquiry by the manager, my mobile number got listed in some SBI data leak (due to their own fault) and hence was blocked.
YONO kept functioning for sometime and then that too stopped!!!
To continue with YONO, I uninstalled it and then reinstalled it each time. It functioned like this for sometime then that too stopped.
All efforts of the bank manager to remove my mobile number from the blacklist FAILED and none of the IT products of SBI worked in my case!!
Then on manager’s suggestion I opened a new account, linked it with a different mobile number and transferred all funds to that account! Even then net banking did not work nor did YONO!!
All my andtge managers efforts to contact highest management of SBI could not restore my account to normalcy!!
In frustration and on advise of SBI itself, I closed my SBI accounts, transferred all funds to a private bank account and bid farewell to SBI.
I have accounts in HDFC and ICICI. ICICI has also started defence salary package accounts. The IT products of HDFC and ICICI are world class. SBI is crawling in comparison!!
All this is on record and can be counter checked.
I put this here so that people may read and invest in SBI on their own risk!
This may be one case; I have had no such issues.
A very simple solution. Remove all electronic facilities from SBI. Use SBI Debit card for normal use. For mobile banking I prefer ICICI Bank. I transfer funds to ICICI Bank by chques, when needed.
ICICI Bank provides better services and has better terms and conditions for DSP for veterans ..
ICICI provides 1 cr Air accident and 50 lakhs personal accident cover to all till 80 years of age with no conditions
HDFC is also good. They also provide an RM who’s quite helpful
Situation applies to all public sector banks. My pension account is with Indian Bank. I had to seriously struggle for about 2 years to restore my full pension after 15 years of retirement. A small portion is still pending and l have no hope of getting that as the bank no more cooperates after Sparsh has taken over.
No doubt, SBI has a highly beaurocratic approach. Can’t get through very many situations like above. However, I may add that the safeguards are highly useful to protect the account holder from any fraud. The system in place are robust. Sad, that the professional approach is missing
As a safety measure I get my Pension in SBI and for day to day use ICICI Bank account. I find it’s working fine.All major transactions SBI and daily/ day to day transactions ICICI Bank & it’s App.
IC-10528 Maj Bhupal Singh
I have my Pension Acct (Rakshak?) with PNB
right from the day I hung my boots. Did not face any serious issued during earlier stages of Pension. Our days, process was simple( manual) and generally staff were helpful. With numerous amendments to Basic Pension, due to raise in Basic & DA etc by Pay Commissions, at times odd amendments in Pensions Rules by the the Govt & the Courts, some kind of abberations have cropped up and I feel lost in these amenments & changes. Also, large number of newly inducted staff ( untrained ???)( they have to learn procedures & rules on job), consequent to Govt’s political options etc, the SERVICE level has gone down somewhat. Suddenly now we find stuck due to SPURSH bombshell. Many of us belonging to LEDGER era of Banks, find quite lost and are waiting for some angles who will rescue us and put things ( rules etc) in some simple
Order, understandable by folks like me.
Trying hard to keep pace with the updated processes. Hope to fond solace once sustem becomes streamlined.
Being 1st day to log in, still to find my Id, PW, info available and procedure of this blog.
Hope I can gain some gems from this treausre
Cdr Parijat Badala.
I am having my pension a/c with PNB for last 12 years and had no problem service is excellent and after being transfered to sparsh bank has gone out of way in helping in submitting live sertificate . The digital Ape PNB one is quite ok. In fact my association with PNB is more then 40 years and for us (foujies)they have PNB rakshak plus which is one of best among all nationalised as well as private banks.
[…] In this episode Lt Gen Vinod Vashisht (retd) gives some sane advice for armed forces personnel with respect to daily banking which they resort to. This advice is good for all officers and PBOR whether they are in service or retired. See it for yourself. The first part of this series is at https://gunnersshot.com/2024/02/12/how-banks-can-help-armed-forces-personnel/ […]
I have my pension account with PNB since 1995 and have had no problems whatsoever. The bank has provided an excellent service to me all these 28 yrs. My thanks and appreciation to the bank
Gunners Shot 
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