2023-08-12 17:42:42
Account fees
Banks consider Monsieur Prix’s criticisms too easy
Bern is demanding lower prices, in particular for the management and closing of bank accounts. Institutions consider their practice justified.
PostedAugust 12, 2023, 7:42 PM
Banks adapt their prices according to their own choices, and not under pressure from the authorities, they say.
20min/Marvin Ancian
Neither hot nor cold: Banks seem unfazed by Mr. Price’s reviews, which has repeatedly demanded that banks reduce their fees, including those on the management and closing of customer accounts. None of the banks contacted would comment directly on the Price Monitor’s remarks. But it is clear from their answers that they find criticism a little too easy.
On the side of Raiffeisen, for example, we note that the costs should not be analyzed out of context. “A majority of customers are members who benefit from free account maintenance and other special conditions and exclusive benefits, such as discounted ski passes and event tickets, as well as ‘free admission to more than 500 museums’, says its press service. For other customers, “fees have increased in some areas in recent years,” acknowledges the bank. But these increases “reflect the range of services that have been developed in recent years, for example in e-banking”.
The devil in the details
For PostFinance too, classifying the banks according to the prices of a choice of certain services seems to lack nuance. It all depends on the services that each customer wishes to have and which will correspond to a banking package whose costs vary. “PostFinance does not plan to adapt the costs of banking packages”, says the establishment in any case.
Another bank even points out that the criteria used by Mr Price are incomplete. In his file, he looks a lot at the monthly account management fees. However, some banks, for example a German-speaking cantonal bank, offer free accounts. Except that, then, if the customer wants a debit card, that’s where it starts to cost.
Mr. Price has limited powers: he can only study, comment and recommend. That’s why he relies on the State Secretariat for the Economy (Seco). This one intervened. He wrote letters to 35 banks “to ask them to waive charging fees for closing accounts, transferring titles and taking over mortgages,” said his spokesman. Several replied that certain adaptations were already planned or were going to be made. But the Seco can’t do much more. “At the end of the day, only a court can, on the possible complaint of a party, judge in a binding way whether the clauses relating to the charges of a bank are unfair or unlawful,” he says, hoping however that agreements at the amicable can succeed before it comes to that.
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