Imagine all your hard earned valuables such as physical gold, diamonds & other jewelleries or important personal documents such as educational documents, marriage certificate, insurance policy documents and others are kept at your home and gets stolen or go missing. You will have no option than cursing yourself. And that is the reason why having a safe deposit locker in bank is the most preferred and recommended option to safeguard your valuables. However at certain point of time, you might feel a need of closing safe deposit locker due to various reasons such as – relocation to a different city or get better option in the same city where annual locker maintenance cost is less than your existing bank. Closure of bank locker is also known as surrender in banking terminology.

Although closing the account is not easy but involves important formalities. Here are the most important steps an hirer (one who has locker opened on his/her name) should do for smooth closure of safe deposit locker:

1) Verify all your belongings kept with the bank: You should always keep a note of all the belongings kept in a bank since your bank doesn’t know what is kept in your locker. Once you have that list ready you can approach your bank.

2) Application to the bank manager: In order to close bank deposit locker, hirer has to write a request letter to the bank manager. In your application form you should mention these important details along with others:

• Locker Number
• Type of locker. Most of the Indian banks offer three types of safe deposit lockers viz. small, medium and large mostly of individuals, small and big companies.
• Full name as mentioned on the account opening form while opening the locker
• Phone number
• Period for which the locker was kept with the bank
• Photo ID proof
• Signature. In case the locker is jointly held then it is mandatory to have signature of all the account holders. Otherwise your application would be straight away rejected.

Once the manager verifies all the details and will check for any due payment, he will sign the application letter and give a go ahead for the closure.

2) Empty the locker: Before you surrender your locker, empty the locker. Best suggestion is to keep the list handy and tick each item removed. This way you won’t miss out any valuable.

3) Return the keys: Once you have removed all your valuables, you will have to handover the keys to the manager. However many a times, hirer loses locker key and in such cases banks will ask a penalty fees and post this payment, you will be issued a duplicate key.

4) Acknowledgement: Once all the above formalities are completed, final acknowledgement letter duly signed by the bank manager along with the official stamp would be issued. This letter states that the person named XYZ, had an account with our bank, branch for specified period and is now closed. In case you close safe deposit account before the end of your term then hirer will get refund for the unutilized period.

Hi, I am Nikesh Mehta, owner and writer of this site. I’m an analytics professional and also love writing on finance and related industry. I’ve done online course in Financial Markets and Investment Strategy from Indian School of Business. I can be reached at nikeshmehta@allonmoney.com.