We tried to open an Indian bank account yesterday and unsurprisingly found it pretty difficult... But not for reasons to be expected – i.e. Being UK citizens or my current lack of job!
It seems that in India, significant importance is placed on signatures and they need to look relatively similar in order to sign for something. Both myself and Helen had to sign upwards of 10 different pieces of paper and we both struggled to get any type of consistency. Each time we signed a document, the friendly bank lady said it looked too different and our application would be rejected. The more we signed, the worse our attempts got and after about 10 minutes of signing pieces of paper, we both felt pretty stupid and were worried this could be a significant stumbling block in our Indian adventure!
In the end we both had to change and simplify our signatures in order to get any sort of consistency. Our application is in progress and we are keeping our fingers firmly crossed.
So if you want to open a bank account in India, practice your signature a few hundred times before going in. It will save you time and a lot of embarrassment!
After all this chaos we did manage to fill in the forms correctly, and our account details and chequebook has arrived! No cashcard yet so maybe we didn't fill inthe forms quite right?!? We'll see....
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