Senseless Banking Fees

RECENTLY, I was talking with someone who works in the financial services sector in Africa. I told him that I never pay any charges whatsoever on my UK current bank account. He didn’t believe me initially and that got me wondering if the Namibian banking public really knows the extent to which our local banks rip us off.

I have had a UK bank account since 1977; in that time I have paid, in total: Charges for issuing a cheque-book, zero pounds. Charges for depositing my own money and that from other sources, zero pounds. Charges for making cheque, direct debit, standing order, telephonic and internet payments, zero pounds. Payments for statements, duplicate statements and sundry other services, zero pounds.The only time I have ever been charged a penny is when I make a cash withdrawal from an ATM not operated by my bank, or I make international transactions. As long as I have any money at all in my account, there are no charges to pay, ever.When I phone my bank (on a toll free line), I immediately speak to someone who can help me or they call me back; I am not indefinitely put on hold only to be then cut off. If they make an error on my account or are responsible for any problems, they pay me a penalty fee by way of compensation.Furthermore, I can go to any high street or suburb in the country and there will be a branch of my bank (if not two), meaning that despite the much larger population of the UK, I never have to queue at my bank for more than a few minutes (including lunch time). These bank branches are effectively ordinary shop fronts, not massive, costly and disproportionately grand ‘statement’ buildings (thereby cutting down on overheads).When I opened a bank account in Namibia, I questioned the exorbitant charges I would have to pay and the manager told me, with a straight face, that the bank needed to charge these sums because it had to pay for the staff, safes, security personnel, secure buildings etc. To which I replied (with sarcasm) that, obviously, this meant my UK bank must keep my funds in an unlocked suitcase on the pavement since it did not feel obliged to charge me for every small activity on my account to cover its overheads.Let’s be clear – banks do not have to charge people fees if they have a positive balance in their account; banks get their real income from interest levied on the loans that they make to individuals and to businesses – using my money (and your money) as someone whose account has a positive balance (i.e., it’s not the bank’s own money that is invested but that of account holders).Banks use my money to make their money, so actually I should get a portion of the interest that they earn and thus benefit a little from their investments, as they benefit a lot from ‘borrowing’ my cash and using it to generate their profits (and in fact I do get a token interest payment, though it is quickly swallowed up by the crazy fees in Namibia, though not in the UK).It would be very interesting to try an experiment. I challenge a local bank to offer zero charges on any account with a positive balance. I suspect that this institution might find itself overnight becoming the only bank used by the overwhelming majority of Namibian account holders, including those who have refused to open an account up until now due to the charges levied. M KellyBy e-mail