Australia's big four banks are refusing to commit to a timeframe for introducing real-time disclosure of electronic banking fees, despite an inquiry finding they should do so.
Liberal Senator Grant Chapman, who fronted the Corporations and Securities Committee's inquiry into the real-time disclosure of Internet, telephone and ATM banking fees, released the report to Parliament today.
"Up-front fee disclosure is important - there's no other service where people purchase something where they don't know the amount they're going to pay," Senator Chapman told ZDNet.
With the efficiency and convenience that electronic banking provides, "there can be no doubt that electronic banking is here to stay," Chapman said.
"Given this, it's essential that customers are fully informed about the cost of each and every transaction before it is undertaken, so they can exercise choice about which bank offers the best deal for them."
The Committee's recommendation was that real-time disclosure for electronic banking be established within two and a half years.
Technical difficulties, costs
However, banks claim that real-time disclosure was not possible in the near future, because of technical difficulties and costs.
Whilst none of the banks wanted to put a time-frame on the implementation of up-front fee disclosure, all said they were working with the Australian Securities Investment Commission (ASIC) Transaction Fee Disclosure Working Group to find a workable solution.
However, ASIC is currently of the view that it will take between three and five years to implement such an initiative, according to Senator Chapman.
"The Committee accepts that there would be substantial costs if real-time disclosure was introduced immediately, but we also emphatically find that a five-year delay would be quite unacceptable," Chapman said
Bank support?
The big four banks claim they support real-time fee disclosure.
"We're not opposed to [real-time disclosure]," National Australia Bank's (NAB) Brandon Phillips told ZDNet. "But there are some practical issues that need to be looked through."
Real-time fee disclosure will greatly slowdown current systems, according to Phillips, "waiting times at ATMs could become quite extensive".
Furthermore, more than half NAB's customers don't pay fees at all, Phillips said. "We don't want to slow ATM transactions down for them."
NAB claims to be taking steps wherever possible to give people disclosure of fees.
"We have existing account disclosure out there that's quite detailed," Phillips said. "Customers get regular account statements with details of exactly what fees are per transaction."
However, this is not adequate disclosure according to the bank comparison Web site, Bankchoice.
"It only ever appears on statements exactly how much transaction costs," Bankchoice representative Lisa Montgomery said. "However, a great percentage of consumers don't look at their statement."
ANZ said to move to real-time disclosure would require potentially millions of dollars of investment and reiterated NAB's claims that a large proportion of its customers are unaffected by electronic banking fees.
Cartels & banks go neatly together. The banks are all in a huge cartel. The ACCC is totally inaffective, no matter what the government says or does. An obvious question would be; why have a senate inquiry if the have no power to impose their findings on the banks. The only reason the ATM process is slow is because the links & the computers used by the banks do not have sufficient bandwidth or processing capacity. The reasons the banks offer is nothing more than an excuse by people who do not understand the technology.
As usual the consumer payes thru the nose. Competition HaaaH !!!