A Philippine Daily Inquirer article reported that the Philippine National Bank (PNB) has been implementing a “no maintaining balance” policy for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their dependents since 2007.
If this has been existent since last year, then it’s not really news anymore so I don’t understand why this saw print in the Inquirer early this week.
In any case, it’s good news for OFWs who are trying to look for ways to make their dependents get the most from the remittances.
Several banks already have special accounts for OFWs and their dependents and, usually, the maintaining balance is P100 for peso accounts and P200 for dollar accounts. But this move by PNB to eliminate the maintaining balance policy is surely to be welcomed by the OFW community.
According to PNB, if the maintaining balance was below $200 or P100 before November 2007, the account holder would be charged $10 for dollar savings account or P100 for peso savings account as penalty. But now, the beneficiary can withdraw the entire amount without being charged a fee.
That certainly is good news.
Do you know of other banks that offer the same?
