Banks Fees Increases and Rate Cuts

Wednesday February 18, 2009

The good news is that Credit Union Australia has announced that they will honour the Reserve Bank of Australia's rate cut as released on Tuesday by installing a reduction to its standard variable rate. This means that Credit Union Australia customers will now benefit from a 5.62 per cent standard variable rate, a decrease of 100 basis points.

However, for banks customers across the board there is bad news in the form of more fee price hikes with Westpac, ANZ, St George and NAB all announcing that they will soon be enforcing additional disloyalty fees for using other banks ATM's. To date, the Commonwealth Bank has not made any announcements regarding fee hikes or charges.

It was originally thought that the additional fees would impact specifically on rural customers where the competition is far less between banks but it now appears that the fees will be extended to cover all areas of Australia. NAB has previously stated that its fee will be 50 cents.
Experts are stating that the number of fees now being attached to use ATM's may result in customers being charged up to $5.

The bank fees hike are a result of the Reserve Bank of Australia recently announcing a new set of rules that state ATM owners (the banks or lenders) may now charge customers a direct fee for use of machines on the condition that the fee is displayed before a withdrawal is completed.

The rules will commence on March 3rd and also state that banks will not charge each other anymore for their customers' use of other ATM's. At the moment, banks charge each other approximately $1 when their customers use another banks ATM with these charges passed along to the customers at a marked up price.

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