HDFC bank has recently announced that henceforth a charge of Rs. 150 plus taxes for each cash withdrawal or deposit after four deposits each month will be applicable. While HDFC bank has made the "mistake" of announcing it to the public, ICICI and Axis bank have been levying these charges in various ways by stealth. And this is not the end of it. There are some even more crazy charges. Axis bank charges for customer’s transaction at a ‘non-home’ branch. Why? Are they incurring an extra charge if the consumer visits a bank closer to home or office rather than go to the branch where they originally opened their account? Surely not in this tech-enabled, networked world of finance.

To this, add trends in deposit rates. Over the last 18 months’ deposit rates have dropped from 9% p.a to 7% p.a. This after you pledge to fix your deposits with these banks for 3-5 years so that they can lend it out as personal, car, home loans, Business Loans at rates starting from 12% p.a and going up to 36% p.a conveniently pocketing the margins.

Are banks taking advantage of the fact that they have the unilateral right to dip into our accounts and take whatever they want to whenever they want? Is this just another way to basically tell customers with a polite and firm smile that “Just hand over your money, we will use it as we want and thank you but don’t expect anything in return.”

Its high time the consumer smartened up to these tactics and take their money elsewhere. P2P Lending is one option. Invest from the comfort of your homes through a tech-enabled platform which brings lenders and borrowers directly in contact with each other. These platforms take the whole process completely online hence don’t need to maintain fancy, air-conditioned branches. Thus, the intermediary margin is eliminated. To this comfort and convenience of investing, add the returns. Even a conservative investor is earning net returns of 18%-20% p.a from Faircent.com. Compare this to saving bank account rates of 3% or fixed deposit rates of 7% plus charges for withdrawing your own money and the decision should not be too tough for any smart investor. So Sign Up now to make your idle money work for you!