VietNamNet Bridge – A lot of commercial banks have raised the existing banking service fees, while having imposed new kinds of fees. They have been warned that their move may do more harm than good.

It’s quite a surprise that the big banks, holding big service market shares, thus having favorable conditions to slash service fees, have initiated the service fee increases

A bank headquartered in Phu Nhuan district in HCM City, has announced that the individual clients who use e-banking service would have to pay VND30,000 in fees per quarter, not including VAT.

A bank headquartered in district 1 has announced that the fee for automatic SMS on account balance would be raised to VND24,000 a quarter, which would be enough for 45 messages. Those clients who make more than 45 transactions and need more than 45 messages, would have to pay VND600 dong for the 46th and subsequent messages.

In early January 2013, a bank decided to raise the fee for informing about the changes in the account balance from VND6,600 dong to VND12,000.

Some big commercial banks have announced the policies on offering preferential fees, but these would be applied only to VIP clients who have high transaction values, while new clients and popular clients with medium and low transactions would still have to bear the high fee levels.

Besides some basic kinds of fees, every bank has imposed specific kinds of fees of their own. As for the payment account services, for example, Sacombank sets up 12 kinds of fees, including the account management fee, cash pay-in fee, cash withdrawal fee.

Other banks have also set up many different kinds of fees, while having raised the existing fees. In the past, customers could exchange bank notes with high nominal values for small value bank notes. Meanwhile, they now have to pay 0.5 percent in fee for the service. Besides, the fee for converting small value bank notes for high value bank notes is 3.6 percent.

Nguyen Thanh Ha, a client in district 7 in HCM City, has noted that banks have been trying to collect all kinds of fee they can think of. The clients who open bank accounts and have the deposit balance of less than VND500,000 a month would have to pay the account management fee of VND10,000. The fee is VND5,000 dong a month, if the deposit balance is less than VND50,000.

Especially, some banks have decided to charge the clients, who withdraw cash or make transactions at the branches in other cities or provinces than the localities where they opened accounts.

Big opportunities for big banks

Experts have noted that in 2013, when banks see no big opportunities to push up lending, they would attempt to increase the revenue from services.

From March 2013, the big banks which hold the largest debit card market shares, namely Vietcombank and Vietinbank will begin collecting fees from cash withdrawal transactions from ATMs and some other kinds of fees.

Only some small banks such as TienPhong Bank, Nam A or VietCapital Bank have announced they would accept losses to maintain the current policy on exempting fees for the transactions with debit cards.

Commenting about the move by commercial banks to raise fees, Cao Sy Kiem, a member of the National Advisory Council for Monetary Policies, said the move by the banks may lead to a reverse effect that people would refuse to make transactions via banks.

DDDN