{"id":44486,"date":"2013-08-20T14:38:56","date_gmt":"2013-08-20T12:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=44486"},"modified":"2013-08-21T09:31:41","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T07:31:41","slug":"sa-bank-charges-compared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/44486\/sa-bank-charges-compared\/","title":{"rendered":"SA bank charges compared"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cost of banking has remained unchanged in the past year, according to research by trade union Solidarity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Monthly bank costs have started to stagnate at an R80 to R100 level,” senior researcher Paul Joubert<\/a> said at a presentation in Centurion, Pretoria.<\/p>\n

“Bank fees are a lot better than it was in previous years. Overall I would say it is good news in most aspects.”<\/p>\n

The research, conducted by the Solidarity Research Institute, compared charges for personal bank accounts offered by Absa<\/a>, FNB<\/a>, Standard Bank<\/a>, Nedbank<\/a>, and Capitec<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Joubert said Standard Bank was the only exception after the bank closed its most competitive mainstream account to new clients.<\/p>\n

“Standard Bank took away the Achiever Electronic account, therefore they are not as competitive.”<\/p>\n

The account was still available for existing consumers but not available on a new account. As a result the bank’s Elite Plus account was the most expensive of the five banks’ cheapest mainstream accounts.<\/p>\n

According to the report the cheapest mainstream account in 2013 is Capitec’s Global One Account, which cost consumers R52.02 monthly, followed by FNB’s Smart Unlimited at R53.20 monthly.<\/p>\n

Absa was third with its Silver Value Bundle at R82 per month, Nedbank’s Savvy Current was R97 monthly, and Standard Bank’s Elite Plus account charged R102.40.<\/p>\n

According to the report, most banks were moving towards bundle accounts at the expense of pay-as-you-transact accounts which limited clients’ choices.<\/p>\n

Joubert said the charges on these accounts had become too high for consumers who would rather pay a fixed amount for all transactions.<\/p>\n

“Capitec is an exception. But the other banks’ charges are so high that you only need to do a small amount of transactions per month but your costs would be higher than you would pay on a bundle account,” he said.<\/p>\n

“In that sense, people are almost forced into having the bundle accounts.”<\/p>\n

Joubert said FNB significantly decreased the fees of its Easy Account this year to target low-income consumers. He said FNB beat Capitec on cost on this level for the first time after Capitec’s success in this market.<\/p>\n

Absa’s Transact account competed well with Capitec on cost, but did not have benefits like internet banking.<\/p>\n

Joubert said it was important for people to find out other options were available to save money on bank charges.<\/p>\n

More on South African banks<\/h3>\n

South Africa\u2019s favourite bank surprise<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

The world\u2019s biggest banks<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Banks to reduce branches by a fifth?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Withdrawal fees: SA banks compared<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Best and worst banks in South Africa<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cost of banking has remained unchanged in the past year, according to research by trade union Solidarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":44482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[29,10335,1798,76,26,1799,1632,499],"class_list":["post-44486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-absa","tag-banking","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\/44486","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44486"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44543,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44486\/revisions\/44543"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}