Last update - 01:38 13/11/2006
Discount Bank reinstitutes old fees
By Asaf Rothem
Israel Discount Bank this weekend announced that it is going to charge membership fees of NIS 10 for its credit cards each month as part of its plan to raise its fees and institute new ones for its customers. The country's third-largest bank has also decided to charge a fee equivalent to 0.1 percent of securities' purchases as well as NIS 100 per quarter for business accounts.
Will other banks follow in Discount's footsteps? Bank Leumi already raised its rates at the end of October, while Bank Hapoalim reported that it has yet to discuss the issue.
In past years all the banks had a tendancy to raise their fees simultaneously, without warning. Line-item fees stood out in this regard, where a bank's announcement was followed within a matter of weeks by one from the remaining institutions. In most cases the increases were identical.
The impression that the similar fee hikes were more than coincidental prompted in 2004 then antitrust commissioner Dror Strum to open an investigation against the banks.
Strum tried to declare that the banks formed a concentration, colluding as a monopoly, but was unable to make his case because no single institution controlled more than 50 percent of the market. Since then, the banks laid low and did not announce any significant fee hikes - until a few days ago.