♤ Helped banking sector

o Improved balance sheets of banks- even though they still make up less than 1 per cent of banks’ deposit base, they sustained growth in a year when deposit flows were hard to come by.

o Falling percentage of zero balance accounts- from 58% in 2015 to 15 % as on January 2019, with even the percentage of inoperative accounts declining from 19.8% in 2017 to 16.3% as on December 2018.

o Servicing Cost is not an issue for the banks now- as the average deposit balance in these accounts has increased.