The year 2020 has been a bad one, and no one can argue with that. The biggest reason for this year to be bad is the global pandemic that has been going around. Due to the coronavirus, almost all businesses and shops have been closed, and people were unable to work properly. Even if all types of works of life are close, there is one working sector that can never be closed. The sector we are talking about is the banking sector.
In these tough times, people were out of jobs and livelihoods. They needed their jobs to feed themselves and their families. Due to this pandemic, people need to look into their bank accounts for their savings. This is a tough time for a lot of people who have lost their jobs and livelihoods due to this.
For the helping of such people, it became crucial for the banks to be opened. The banks had to follow several guidelines and precautions as well during these tough times.
The State Bank of India is one of the biggest banks in India. Over 50 percent of the people in our country have accounts in the SBI. So, it became crucial for the state bank official to work even during the lockdown period.
Due to the pandemic, these officials and state banks of India executives had to follow RBI’s norms and health regulations. This made the bank’s working hours more limited and a limited number of officials being in the office during work hours.
According to these norms, the State Bank of India was made to restrict their timings as well as the modes of transactions as well.
- The national electronic fund transfer, also known as NEFT services, was available at all the SBI branches from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm every day.
- The real-time gross settlement or RTGS service was available at all the SBI branches from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm every day.
- The banks are closed during the 2nd and 4th Saturdays as well as every Sunday during this lockdown period.
- They open the bank branches normally on the rest of the days, i.e., Monday to Friday and on 1st, 3rd, 5th Saturdays. The timings of banks on these days were from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
- People could avail of basic banking services like cash deposit and withdrawal on these days from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
- The lunchtime allotted were the same as they were during the normal days. However, these lunch timings vary from branch to branch.
Conclusion
Banking services are a crucial part of everyone’s lives. This has become more prominent nowadays due to the problems created by the pandemic. The timings and banking services have been limited during this pandemic and this lockdown period. This article gives a clear detail of all the timings and services made available during this time.