Most of the companies provide Salary Account for their employees. That is a good scheme – zero balance and the bank official comes directly to your office and collects everyone’s details. He even fills up all the forms and asks you to just sign in various places (a bad idea though) and within a week your savings account will be ready.
Out of all the forms he asks you to sign, there will be one part you would have missed – Nomination. Just imagine you fresh out of college, got a nice job and joining a big company and the first day you are excited to see the new place and new friends. You most probably would have not remembered that filling out your nominee is important.
Even if you were to ask the bank agent where to fill the nominee information, they would say its on a separate form and he doesn’t have a copy of that form. There is a simple reason they don’t bring the nominee form or don’t prefer you filling it. Each agent will be opening the account for about 30-50 people and the nominee form would require one signature for you, and two signatures & details from 2 witnesses. It would take at least 5 minutes extra for each person to search for witnesses and get them to sign it. So the agents skip it entirely.
How does filling nominee help and why is it important?
The bank’s laziness shouldn’t cost you. Nominee is a person to whom all your money in your account will be given to, incase you die. This may not seem important to you now, but since when the need arises, you won’t be there to help your family get your money. Remember, like a life insurance helps your family financially, even the few tens of thousands of rupees in your account would help them.
Only Salary Account? How about your other accounts?
All your accounts (Savings, Current, Fixed Deposits) should have the nominee filled in. Mostly if you main Saving’s account has the nominee filled, all FDs you open online will also have the same nominee unless explicitly specified. So whenever you open a new account, make sure you fill the nominee page correctly.
What should you do now?
Go login to your bank’s net banking website or call up their customer service numbers. Check out if your account has nominee filled in. If it is filled – good. If not:
- Download and print the nominee form. Use that office printer.
- Fill it up. Don’t forget that it requires one or two witnesses’ signature (depending on the bank).
- You most probably have to go directly to a branch and submit it. But confirm with the customer care.
I know you will be lazy to go search for the form, so here are the different popular banks and their nomination forms. Now click and download it and get this done: