Consumer Attention: Many banks have quietly raised fees

Consumer Attention Many banks have quietly raised fees (Alberta Times) Do you need a new card if you lose your bank debit card? Bank of…

(Alberta Times)

> Lost your bank debit card and need a new one? Bank of America now charges $5 for express delivery, or $20 for express delivery. Do you want to use your phone to deposit money? US Bancorp now charges 50 cents per check. Faced with an angry public response to banks and increased scrutiny from regulators, banks are turning to a variety of unobtrusive fees. Everything seems to cost money. Want to send money to your account? Starting in December, TD Bank will charge $15 for every domestic transfer. Alex Matjanec, co-founder of the website MyBankTracker.com, pointed out that many people are not aware that banks have been adding new fees, or raising existing fees, or making these fees more difficult to avoid. ?BR> Banks can still make profits on most checking accounts. But they are under pressure. Banks will lose about $1.2 billion in revenue due to high overdraft fees and regulations that require lower debit card swipe fees. In addition, with lending unable to grow and interest rates near zero, banks will find it difficult to lend out or make good investments. For consumers, the result is a variety of new fees and higher fees for everything from cash withdrawals at ATMs to wire transfers and document requests. What's more, banks are raising minimum balances on accounts and adding other requirements that make it difficult for customers to qualify for fee waivers. Bank of America eliminated its $5 monthly fee for debit cards in late October, but this year it quietly raised the monthly fee for its basic MyAccess checking account by $3, and now has a monthly account maintenance fee from $8.95 to $12. Chase and Citigroup have also raised fees for basic checking accounts, with Citigroup raising its monthly fees from $8 to $10 in February. Many customers were not charged a monthly fee in February. In response to the uproar over fee increases, some bankers believe the ultimate answer lies in inducing customers to offer more services to other businesses rather than using their checking accounts to make up for lost revenue. To manage a personal checking account within a bank, banks have to pay costs ranging from branch staffing to paying federal deposit insurance premiums, which run about $200 to $300 per account per year. In the past, banks charged most of the checking account maintenance costs from merchants and every time a customer swiped their debit card or overdrawn their account, so banks offered everyone free TD checking accounts. Bank executives said one of their most popular products, a simple checking account with no minimum balance requirement, launched in March and has already signed up nearly 300,000 customers despite a monthly fee of $2.99. And nearly all major banks have begun cutting costs and cutting branches and staff. After 15 years of expansion, the number of branches in the banking industry is 1.4% lower than at the peak in 2009. Banks have also cut the interest rates they pay depositors. According to the consulting company Market Rates Insight, the average bank deposit interest rate fell to 0.74% from 0.8% in the first half of this year. However, most consumers did not notice that these actions converted into real income? The entire banking industry has reduced costs by about $1.5 billion per month.