Editing the MAB Circular Before It Reaches 2.3 Million Customers
The compliance team has drafted a circular announcing a revision in the minimum average balance (MAB) requirement for savings accounts. Four of the five numbered sentences below contain exactly one error each; one sentence is correct.
(1) "The Bank has revised the MAB requirement for savings accounts with effect from 1 April, the details of which is being communicated to branches separately." (2) "Customers who fail to maintain the prescribed balance will be liable for a monthly charge of Rs 50, except for accounts opened under the Jan Dhan scheme." (3) "Having reviewed the feedback received from branches, it was decided that the charge would be levied once a quarter." (4) "Neither the branch manager nor the operations officers was aware of the revised schedule." (5) "The revised charges are less than that of the previous year."
The circular will be sent to 2.3 million customers as an SMS and to 1,100 branches as an internal note, so grammar, clarity and register all matter. Nothing can be withdrawn once the SMS gateway batch is released at 6 p.m.
1. Identify the one correct sentence. For each flawed sentence, name the error type and give a corrected version.
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Correct sentence: (2). The verb agrees with "Customers", "liable for" is the right collocation with a charge, and "except for" is correctly used before a noun phrase.
(1) Subject-verb agreement with a relative clause. The relative pronoun "which" refers to "details" (plural), not to "requirement". The verb must be plural: "...the details of which are being communicated to branches separately."
(3) Dangling modifier / missing agent. "Having reviewed the feedback" has no logical subject; "it was decided" is impersonal, so the sentence says the decision reviewed the feedback. Fix by naming the agent: "After the Committee reviewed the feedback received from branches, it was decided that the charge would be levied once a quarter."
(4) Proximity agreement with correlative conjunctions. With "neither ... nor", the verb agrees with the nearer subject, "operations officers" (plural): "Neither the branch manager nor the operations officers were aware of the revised schedule."
(5) Faulty comparison. "Less than that of" compares "charges" (plural) with "that" (singular) and confuses less/fewer territory. Correct: "The revised charges are lower than those of the previous year."
2. Sentence (3) needs restructuring, not a word swap. Rewrite it so the modifier has a logical subject, keeping the meaning unchanged, in one sentence.
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Diagnosis: the participial phrase "Having reviewed the feedback received from branches" is an adverbial modifier. An adverbial participle must share its subject with the main clause. The main clause "it was decided" has a dummy subject "it", so the sentence literally attributes the reviewing to the decision - a classic dangling modifier.
Two workable repairs:
- Supply the agent as subject: "After reviewing the feedback received from branches, the Compliance Committee decided that the charge would be levied once a quarter."
- Convert the participle into a full clause: "Having reviewed the feedback received from branches, the Committee decided that the charge would be levied once a quarter."
Avoid: "Having reviewed the feedback, the charge was decided to be levied once a quarter" - this makes "the charge" the reviewer, which is worse than the original.
Note on meaning: the original leaves the decision-maker unnamed. In a compliance circular that is itself a defect, since customers and branches must know who decided and whom to approach. Naming the Committee in the rewrite fixes grammar and accountability at the same time.
3. Compress the corrected circular into a customer SMS of not more than 35 words. State what you deliberately dropped and why.
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Suggested SMS (30 words): "From 1 April, savings accounts must keep the revised minimum average balance. Accounts below it will be charged Rs 50 a month, levied quarterly. Jan Dhan accounts are exempt. Details: [branch/link]."
What was dropped and why:
- The internal communication to branches - an operational instruction, irrelevant to a customer and a distraction in a 35-word limit.
- The feedback review and the identity of the deciding committee - governance process, not customer action.
- "Neither the branch manager nor the operations officers..." - that sentence never belonged in a customer circular at all; it is an internal audit observation and should be deleted, not corrected.
What was kept and why: the four things a customer must act on - the effective date, the obligation (revised MAB), the consequence (Rs 50 monthly, quarterly levy), and the exemption. The register is deliberately plain and second-person-facing: "must keep" and "will be charged" are clearer than "liable for" and "levied" in an SMS, and passive constructions were removed wherever the customer is the actor. Once the gateway batch is released nothing can be withdrawn, so the action-and-consequence pair must be checkable at a glance.