Related Articles
Top Stories
May 27 2012 11:21
There's a price war raging between South Africa's cellphone networks after Cell C lowered the rates of its prepaid calls by more than 34%.
May 27 2012 11:49
The country's 200 000-odd Tupperware agents are angry about the counterfeit products being sold as the real McCoy.
May 27 2012 13:09
The oversupply of golf estates has claimed another victim.
Cape Town - Standard Bank, which previously had the cheapest package, upped its fees by a whopping 26%, Finweek's third annual review of banking charges has shown.
However, the review has shown that despite the big increase, it remains less expensive than FNB, which has fees just below Absa, now the most expensive bank on a packaged basis.
The review, done in conjunction with Horwath Forensics, has also shown that while there are pockets of change in the structure and composition of bank charges, they are rare.
The research parameters set for the research three years ago still include the Finweek family, earning a combined household income of R500 000/year, which carry out a range of banking transactions on a monthly basis.
The family don't bank as efficiently as they should and incur a range of unnecessary costs. For the purposes of illustration, Finweek haven't informed them of their failings and tasked Horwath Forensics to carry out the investigation for the second time.
According to the parameters of the research, Nedbank has made the greatest progress in cutting its fees, while Standard Bank, though still in line with its peer group, has been the most aggressive at increasing the cost of banking with it.
It isn't possible to discern precisely what consumers pay in fees - but it's a significant contributor to banks' profit.
Finweek's 2007 Bank Charges report found the biggest movement in fees occurred within the packaged offerings.
Some of the findings include:
- Nedbank is the cheapest for packaged costs (the selected package being the 18+ Plan) at R245.13, with Absa the most expensive at R357.05 (for the Gold Current Account Package).
- Standard Bank, which previously had the cheapest package, upped its fees by a whopping 26%.
- Absa is the cheapest when it comes to pay-as-you-transact at R399.98, followed by FNB (424.28), Nedbank (430.61) and Standard Bank (R521.02).
- Absa remains cheapest when it comes to household banking, with Standard Bank most expensive.
- One of the murkier aspects of bank charges relates to penalty fees - the charges that you pay the bank when you "break your contract" with your bank.
The full report, with illustrations are in this week's Finweek - on sale now! You can also subscribe online.
- Fin24