{"id":24534,"date":"2012-10-18T14:08:04","date_gmt":"2012-10-18T12:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=24534"},"modified":"2012-10-18T14:44:28","modified_gmt":"2012-10-18T12:44:28","slug":"most-banks-have-lowered-their-charges-solidarity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/24534\/most-banks-have-lowered-their-charges-solidarity\/","title":{"rendered":"Most banks have lowered their charges \u2013 Solidarity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four of the five large commercial banks in South Africa have lowered the cost of virtually all their accounts over the past year, with Nedbank<\/a> as the only exception, according to a new report from union, Solidarity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Capitec<\/a>, whose bank charges were already the lowest in 2010 and 2011, lowered its charges even further in 2012, according to findings\u00a0in the Solidarity Research Institute\u2019s (SRI\u2019s) third annual report on bank charges.<\/p>\n

The study compares the bank charges of various personal bank accounts of \u00a0Absa<\/a>, FNB<\/a>, Standard Bank<\/a>, Nedbank and Capitec.<\/p>\n

Paul Joubert<\/a>, senior economics researcher at the SRI, notes that when\u00a0the cheapest accounts of the banks are compared, Capitec\u2019s Global One account is still the cheapest. This account\u2019s average bank charges across eight different user profiles amount to R55,50 a month, which is a 15.9% decrease from R66 in 2011.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Nedbank\u2019s cheapest option is its Savvy Electronic account with average monthly bank charges more than double those of Capitec. In addition, this account\u2019s charges have increased by 4.5%, from R107,79 to R112,61, between 2011 and 2012, Joubert said.<\/p>\n

Each bank\u2019s cheapest account in 2011 and 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Charges calculated as an average of eight transaction profiles, the effect of interest or forgone interest excluded.)<\/small><\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Bank<\/strong><\/td>\nCheapest account (2011)
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		Costs 2011
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		Costs 2012
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n		Cheapest account (2012)<\/strong><\/strong><\/td>\nDifference<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Capitec<\/td>\nGlobal One Account<\/td>\nR66.00<\/td>\nR55.50<\/td>\nGlobal One Account<\/td>\n-R10.50<\/p>\n

-15.9%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

FNB<\/td>\nSmart – Unlimited<\/td>\nR74.53<\/td>\nR60.95<\/td>\nSmart – Unlimited<\/td>\n-R13.58<\/p>\n

-18.2%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Absa<\/td>\nSilver Package<\/td>\nR148.14<\/td>\nR91.05<\/td>\nSilver Value Bundle<\/td>\n-R57.09<\/p>\n

-38.5%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Standard Bank<\/td>\nClassic Cheque – fixed fee<\/td>\nR134.89<\/td>\nR109.81<\/td>\nAchiever – Electronic<\/td>\n-R25.08<\/p>\n

-18.6%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

Nedbank<\/td>\nSavvy – Electronic<\/td>\nR107.79<\/td>\nR112.61<\/td>\nSavvy – Electronic<\/td>\nR4.82<\/p>\n

+4.5%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

The bank charges of Absa, FNB, Standard Bank and Capitec were not lowered for the abovementioned accounts only \u2013 the bank charges of almost all accounts of these banks have declined, Solidarity said.<\/p>\n

The effect of Absa and Standard Bank\u2019s efforts to make its bank charges more competitive are visible. Solidarity points out that while\u00a0Absa and Standard Bank were the most expensive banks in 2010 and 2011, they now oprovide stiff competition to FNB, previously the clear market leader with the popular \u2018bundle\u2019 type accounts.<\/p>\n

However, the union notes that Standard Bank is, as in previous years, still being handicapped by the fact that it levies an exceptionally high fee of R16 for creating or amending stop orders. “Many bank clients will, however, not be affected by this fee and without it, the Achiever Electronic account\u2019s average costs would have been only R85,81 and not R109,81,” it said.<\/p>\n

Moreover, each of the \u201cBig Four\u201d commercial banks is promoting a \u201clow-cost\u201d account: Absa\u2019s Transact, FNB\u2019s EasyPlan, Standard Bank\u2019s AccessAccount and Nedbank\u2019s Ke Yona. Standard Bank\u2019s AccessAccount is the most expensive of these accounts across the board.<\/p>\n

“As far as the \u201clow-cost\u201d accounts are concerned, the choice is really limited to Capitec\u2019s Global One account, FNB\u2019s EasyPlan account and Absa\u2019s Transact account,” said Joubert.<\/p>\n

The economics researcher says that lower charges and stronger competition make up the main theme of this year\u2019s report. “It appears that consumers are more informed and are putting more pressure on their banks to offer better value for money. Judging by the decreases in four of the five large banks\u2019 charges, it seems that this consumer pressure is starting to pay off,”\u00a0Joubert said.<\/p>\n

Related article<\/strong><\/p>\n

FNB named most innovative bank in the world<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Best banks for business<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Withdrawal fees \u2013 how SA banks stack up<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Most popular bank accounts in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Why FNB is rated as the top bank in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA has highest ATM fees: survey<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Best and worst banks in SA: reputation survey<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four of the five large commercial banks in South Africa have lowered the cost of virtually all their accounts over the past year, with Nedbank as the only exception, according to a new data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":22444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[29,1798,76,26,1799,1632,499],"class_list":["post-24534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-absa","tag-capitec","tag-fnb","tag-headline","tag-nedbank","tag-solidarity","tag-standard-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24534"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24540,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24534\/revisions\/24540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}