Friday, May 30, 2014

Attention: IDBI Bank's demat clients



We had earlier posted the following cautionary information titled "IDBI Bank: Is it reliable as a DEPOSITORY PARTICIPANT?"

"Many customers who have their demat accounts (for shares) with IDBI Bank are in a state of shock. The December 2013 statements sent by the DP disclose lots of transactions which were not authorised by the customers.

When the matter was reported to IDBI Bank, the bank silently despatched another statement without calling it the corrected statement and without offering any apology or owning their mistake. It is now anybody's guess what went wrong where.

Those customers who have not verified their statements may do so early."

Since then there have been a few more occurrences which only aggravate clients' fears. For example, the bank has issued a Demat Statement of Account from 01-Apr-2014 to 30-Apr-2014 to a client who has not transacted any business during this month. Under the column "Securities in which no transactions took place", no security is mentioned. This obviously means either there is no security in the account or there have been transactions in all securities, both of which are wrong in the instant case.

When the matter was raised with the bank, the bank replied as follows:
".As there was no transaction for the month of April 2014,the details are showing as NIL under the heading "securities in which no transaction took place ". What a superb oxymoron!

Either the bank does not know what it is doing or there is a smart alec fraudster.

As if to confuse us further, the bank also adds, "As there was a technical fault on the part of printing vendor,the previous statement (December 2013) was showing the wrong values with incorrect heading and the same was rectified by the Bank."

Whereas the client was referring to the statement relating to the month of April, the bank refers to December 2013. It is difficult not to conclude that IDBI Bank's demat department is in a deep mess. It is hoped that RBI and SEBI will look into this and protect the bank's clients.



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