Bangladesh Bank (BB) has directed all scheduled banks to convert school banking accounts to savings accounts, upon the account holders reaching 18 years of age.
The central bank issued the directive in a circular to the CEOs and managing directors of scheduled banks on Monday, ordering school banking accounts of students who are 18 years old to be converted to general savings accounts with the consent of the account holders.
Additionally, the circular also mandated banks to regularly send information about theprogress of school students’ accounts to the Financial Inclusion Department of Bangladesh.
School banking accounts and their deposits rose by nearly 14% in September compared to the same period last year, according to the latest data by BB.
During the July-September period of the current fiscal year, deposits rose by Tk173.91 crore to Tk1,428.14 crore, while the number of accounts increased by 222,344 to 1,609,961.
This is an increase from the previous fiscal year—where total deposits were Tk1,254.23 crore and total number of accounts were 1,387,617—for the same period.
Tk1,196.65 crore—83.96% of total school banking deposits till September this year—was deposited with 1,031,383 accounts. 64.06% of a total school banking accounts is in private commercial banks.
On the other hand, Tk191.15 crore was deposited with 446,426 accounts in state-owned commercial banks, as mentioned in the central bank's latest quarterly report on financial inclusion.
