Customers fail to visit their lockers on a regular basis after availing the facility of bank lockers to keep jewelry and important documents safe.
Your bank may open the locker if you don't visit your bank locker at least once a year, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) regulations. You may get more time if you fall in the low-risk category.
For those who fall in the medium-risk category, the bank will send a notification only if the locker remains un-operated for more than three years as per RBI regulations.
Depending on various parameters such as financial or social status, nature of the business activity, location of customers and their clients, banks classify their customers in different risk categories--low, medium, high. Banks are required to carry out proper due diligence before allotting a locker to a person.
The bank is required to send a notice to the locker holder advising him to either operate or surrender the locker facility in case a locker has remained idle for long. The bank needs to ask you to provide a written response regarding the reason for not operating the locker.
If the reasons mentioned are genuine, that is, if you are a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) or you were not in the city due to a transferable job or any other genuine reason, then the bank can allow you to continue with the locker facility.
The bank can cancel your allotment and allocate it to someone else even if you have been paying rent regularly but haven’t operated the account in the prescribed time limit if you fail to provide a proper explanation.
Every bank is required to inform the customer about the clause and the bank has to follow a proper procedure to open a bank locker. This is supposed to be part of the agreement of hiring a locker facility.
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