Standard Chartered, Hongkong Bank and Times Bank are among those banks that are looking at getting more personal accounts than just corporate ones. And are offering an array of services such as free cheque pick-up/delivery, transfer of money, handling routine payments like house rents, loan installments, school fees and even delivering cash every month to a relative, like a mother living in another city.

Banks are moving away from the traditional concept of savings accounts and are trying to make banking procedures easier to increase their customer base.

``We conduct this exercise from time to time and have been successful in increasing our customer base,'' says Anil Bhatia, manager, Times Bank, Punjabi Bagh. During the last advertising campaign, Times Bank reported a 39 per cent increasein accounts.

The convenience of anywhere, anytime banking is what these banks are pinning their pitch on with no transaction charges at that. ``The minimum balance of Rs 10,000 has to be maintained per quarter. Otherwise, we charge an overdraft penalty of Rs 300,'' says a Standard Chartered spokesperson.

HongKong Bank requires a minimum balance of Rs 25,000; Times Bank requires Rs 5,000.

``The idea is to provide hassle-free banking so that the customer is happy,'' says Bhatia. ``This month, for example, there were five banking holidays in a row, but we were open and our customers had no problems. We are also linked by satellite to all our 32 centres and withdrawing money from any of these centres is easy,'' he says.

The ``room service'' facilities is what has become the crowd-puller. These banks send their representatives to the customer's house to conduct transactions starting with opening the account to delivering sums of up to Rs 25,000 to the account holder or up to Rs 10,000 to any persondesignated by the customer at an address listed with the bank.

``This takes care of the routine payments that any person has to usually make such as house rent, school fees, loan installments, etc,'' says Malini Thadani, manager, public affairs, HongKong Bank.

Banks are offering some unique additional facilities, too. HongKong Bank also has relationship offers, where customers get a joining fee waiver for a credit card (normally Rs 300), and small discounts on the interest on loans against shares or car loans.

Standard Chartered offers a guarantee on its prompt service and pays the customer Rs 50, if the service is delayed for more than 24 hours for their `Easy Save' and `Easy Current' account holders.

Times Bank has gone a step further and has introduced discount offers on retail products akin to what most credit card companies offer. Recently, Times Bank had an offer of a 40 per cent discount on Nike shoes exclusively for their customers. They also had an offer on chocolates from Nestle. Free CDsfrom Times Music were also given to existing customers, who provided the bank at least three references for new customers.

``These revolutionary concepts have been a big hit with our customers and the traditional banking practices have been rewritten,'' says Bhatia. And with new ideas being incorporated, operating a saving bank account won't be the same any more.