Last update - 01:43 15/11/2007
Bank Hapoalim: New fee structure is bad for customers
By Tal Levy
Bank Hapoalim thinks that the new fee structure is "detrimental to customers and the advance of Israeli bank-account management, and harmful to competition between banks," it said yesterday.
The new list contains just 68 types of fees compared with 198 in use at the banks at present.
Canceled payments include documentation fees for getting a loan, fees for interest and dividend payments as well as fees for small businesses and foreign currency accounts.
Checking-account activities (about 15 types of operations), which have each been subject to a different fee, are now consolidated in a single type of operation to be subject to a single rate. The new list contains only two types of fee - one for direct checking-account activity (by Internet, telephone or ATM), and one for operations performed by a bank employee - with no differentiation between the operations themselves.
As a result, a customer whose main banking activity is limited to a checking account can focus on just two types of fee when comparing banks.
Bank Hapoalim believes that the current system, which it describes as an array of services provided for a set fee rather than specific fees for each service, meets the test of simplicity and has been adopted by the world's most modern banks.
"Cancellation of the current system is detrimental to the consumer and his freedom of choice, and therefore contradicts the intention and spirit of the law," Bank Hapoalim writes. "The product is one which the customer chooses voluntarily, and is free to change this choice every month and choose a different fee structure at no extra charge."