What are the benefits of having a Preferred Banking account in HDFC Bank?*

TY for the A2A.

I never applied for HDFC Bank Preferred Banking. But I have been an HDFC Bank Preferred Banking customer from Day One, which is nearly 15 years ago. I don’t know why.

https://twitter.com/s_ketharaman/status/1190184264672907264

I’ve never bothered to find out what are the benefits of Preferred Banking. Purely by chance, I heard about the following two benefits:

  1. Relationship Manager
  2. Free Demand Draft for up to INR 2.00 Lakhs.

The RM keeps changing frequently. There have been times when three different people have called / emailed me, saying they’re my RM and have asked for an appointment to meet me. I told them to get an email from their Head of Relationship Banking to support their claim. One of them got that email. I granted an appointment to him. He never turned up. This happened two more times. Then I formally wrote to HDFC Bank asking them to replace my RM and, if that were not possible, remove the concept of RM altogether from my account. They told me, I’m PB customer, they must assign some RM to my account. To date, I’ve never met a single RM. I find RM to be a pain, not privilege.

Coming to the second benefit I stumbled upon, the next time I needed a DD, I went to HDFC Bank. It was for over 1L. They told me, only DD up to INR 1.00 Lakh is free of commission, so my DD would attract commission. I hustled with the branch manager and eventually got my DD without paying any charges. But I’ve a sneaking suspicion that I could’ve done that even if I were not a Preferred Banking customer.

So both benefits I heard about have proved to be useless.

Then, of course there’s the status symbol attached to being a Preferred Banking customer. I know people who flaunt that status by dropping “I called my RM” and similar lines to their friends and coworkers at every available opportunity. From my personal experience, that’s a short-lived benefit: By the time you reach Preferred Banking status, somebody in your circle could already be in the higher Imperia Banking or even higher Private Banking clubs. That’s a never-ending race, which perhaps stops only after reaching the Forbes Rich List.

But that shouldn’t stop you from trying to run this race. Who knows, you could be the first one in your circle to enter the Forbes Rich List.

UPDATE DATED 13 SEPTEMBER 2019:

I recently received an SMS from HDFC Bank saying it’s “launching PhoneBanking service just for Preferred Banking Customers!” I’m generally wary of any company’s PhoneBanking. I haven’t tried this specific Preferred Banking PhoneBanking yet. So I don’t know whether it’s a benefit or opposite of benefit!

UPDATE DATED 12 FEBRUARY 2021:

I recently learned about another feature of HDFC Bank Preferred Banking:

Having watched this video, I won’t call it a benefit but this kinda stuff floats a lot of people’s boats, so I thought of putting it out here.

UPDATE DATED 25 AUGUST 2021:

Yet another Relationship Manager. Sure. Why not.

I keep telling the bank I don’t want an RM. The bank keeps sending me one RM after another.

I’ve heard about one school of thought which advocates that, if you want X, you should never desire X. This RM business pushes me one step closer to embracing that ideology.

On a side note, in my industry (B2B Technology), we need to do a lot of research about prospective customers and craft personalized messages even to strangers in order to achieve even a modest degree of success in our customer communications. But, look at this RM: s/he coolly addresses me as “Sir / Ma’am”. They probably don’t even know my name or gender, still expect to grow a 15+ year old relationship. Yet another way in which this bank redefines what it takes to become a country’s #1 brand and one of the 20 most valuable banks in the world.

https://twitter.com/s_ketharaman/status/1429106140982386698

UPDATE DATED 15 OCTOBER 2021:

I’ve been having multiple accounts with this private sector bank for 20+ years. But, over the years, this bank has become my secondary – even tertiary – bank. Barring my eStockTrading account and the linked savings account, my other accounts with it have almost become dormant.

Still, last month, this bank suddenly enrolled me for its version of Preferred Banking – let me call it “Privilege Banking” for ready reference.

Its RM called me and asked me if I had any issues. I told him, yes, even though I click left mouse button on its NetBanking portal, it shows me an error message saying “right click disabled for security reason”. He told me he’d check with his proverbial “backend team” and get back to me.

Nothing happened for one month.

Then, he called me again a few days ago and asked me if I had any issues.

I reminded him about the issue pending with him from last month and asked him if he had any update for me. He said, no. Then I asked him why he called me.

He told me that, as my RM, it was his responsibility to call me once a month to inquire about my issues. I congratulated him for doing a great job on that count and asked him whose responsibility it was to resolve past issues. He had no answer.

I’m sure he’ll call me next month but, now that I’ve saved his number as spam, I can duck his call.

Moral of Story: Not to single out HDFC Bank, things don’t seem to be hunky-dory even with some other banks.