ICICI Bank has steeply upped the minimum monthly average balance (MAB) requirement for new Savings Bank (SB) deposit customers with effect from August 1, 2025.
This comes at a time when deposit rates in the banking system are going down due to ample liquidity and repo rate cuts by RBI.
So, the minimum MAB for new depositors with India’s second largest bank in metro & urban and semi-urban locations has gone up five times to ₹50,000 (from ₹10,000 earlier) and ₹ 25,000 (from ₹5,000), respectively. For customers in rural locations, the MAB has risen four times to ₹10,000 (₹2,500).
Industry experts say the revision in MAB indicates a push by the Bank towards class banking.
That the banking system has ample liquidity is underscored by the fact that the surplus as on August 7th was at about ₹3.55 lakh crore.
Further, more liquidity is set to be released into the banking system in tranches due to the four stage cash reserve ratio cuts of 25 basis points each with effect from the fortnights beginning September 6, October 4, November 1 and November 29, 2025.
The cut in CRR (from 4 per cent to 3 per cent) would release primary liquidity of about ₹2.5 lakh crore to the banking system by December 2025.
In the backdrop of abundant liquidity and repo rate cuts aggregating 100 basis points during the February-June 2025 period, Banks, on an average, have reduced their savings bank deposit rate to 2.50 per cent (as on August 1, 2025) from 2.70/3.00 per cent as on August 2, 2024.
Interest rates on term deposits of more than one year duration have also declined to 5.85/6.70 per cent as on August 1, 2025 from 6.00/7.30 per cent as on August 2, 2024, per RBI data.
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Published on August 9, 2025
