‘Banks cannot deny copy of statements to borrowers’

The Debts Recovery Tribunal, Chennai, has ruled that banks cannot deny copy of account statements to customers even in cases where the borrower has discharged the debt or defaulted.

“Every customer of a bank is entitled to have copies of their statement of account(s) from the banker and the bank is under contractual obligation to furnish it. Maybe the bank is entitled to charge for the copies but it cannot deny the right to have a copy by virtue of the contract of lending entered between the bank and the customer,” said N.V. Badarinath, presiding officer, Debts Recovery Tribunal-I, Chennai, in his order.

The verdict was in the case of NPT Offset Press Pvt. Ltd., an MSME, and the State Bank of India.

As per court records, the Debts Recovery Tribunal had directed NPT Offset to pay ₹16.35 crore due to SBI. Later, both the parties agreed for a one-time settlement for about ₹2.62 crore. NPT Offset had then moved the tribunal, seeking to acquire its bank statements.

The tribunal rejected the bank’s plea that the firm was precluded from demanding copies of its account statements having accepted the one-time settlement.

When a borrower had accepted and complied with the one-time settlement scheme promoted by the bank, it could not be said that the borrower was debarred from asking for their account statements, it said.