While the Financial Sector Advisory Committee right this moment launched its examine on bank tariffs in 2021, AFOC, CLCV, UNAF, Familles Rurales and UFC-Que Choisir denounce the unacceptable decline in readability of sure worth brochures. Denouncing the betrayal by the banks of their dedication, the associations urge the public authorities to control the presentation of bank tariffs by regulation, to create the situations for wholesome competitors, producing moderation in tariffs.
Banking mobility, a buying energy difficulty
Although shoppers have an curiosity in making use of competitors between banks to avoid wasting on charges paid (as much as € 180 in annual financial savings), we see that bank mobility caps at 2.5% per yr. It should be mentioned that banks are doing every thing to scale back the comparability of their offers, to be able to protect the appreciable sums they take from shoppers (25 billion euros in 2018).
As proof, in 2021 the banks’ worth brochures embrace a median of 390 costs unfold over 27 pages.1. In this virtually generalized nebula, some banks are utterly drowning shoppers beneath the weight of data: the worth brochure imposed by Société Générale is thus a millefeuille of 55 pages, and that of the Caisse d’Épargne Grand Est Europe shows at least 612 costs !
BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Boursorama …: the black sheep of legibility
To facilitate the comparability between the offers, and beneath stress from client associations, the banks had nonetheless undertaken in 2010 to publish on the first web page of their brochure a regular extract of the tariffs (EST) grouping the costs of the commonest companies. (account upkeep, bank card contribution, and many others.).
It is deplorable that this progress is on the approach out, as proven by the report of the Financial Sector Advisory Committee on bank tariffs for 2021. Indeed, one in 5 shoppers2 not has entry to EST since Boursorama and Hello Bank! have joined the retrograde institutions which had already deleted it from their brochure final yr (notably BNP Paribas, Société Générale, Crédit du Nord, ING Direct).
The banks couldn’t justify this decline by the implementation of the tariff data doc imagined by Europe (DIT). Supposed to advertise competitors by succinctly summarizing the total annual price of a bank account, it’s misguided in its goal of readability. Not being sufficiently standardized in its presentation, it shows incomparable packages (entry-level at LCL, mid-range at Crédit mutuel, and many others.). Worse, the regional banks of Crédit Agricole don’t embrace, for instance, the price of the bank card contribution.
The Government, as soon as once more a sufferer of the mirage of self-regulation
While the Government could be anticipated to attract the penalties of this snub by guaranteeing, by regulation, the situations for wholesome competitors in the banking sector, its complacency vis-à-vis professionals is meaningless. In the spring of 2020, he thus exerted all his weight for the rejection of parliamentary amendments aimed toward restoring the legibility of the worth brochures by saying to the Senate the holding of proceedings … which have nonetheless not seen the gentle of day.3 !
Even extra severe, as with the capping of incident prices, he persists in believing in self-regulation to make sure the sustainability of client rights. This is to overlook that, primarily based on “good practices” set by the professionals themselves, they can’t be invoked by shoppers of their disputes. What is extra, they are often freely amended by professionals.
Anxious to ensure shoppers related data, AFOC, CLCV, UNAF, Familles Rurales and UFC-Que Choisir name on the public authorities to determine by regulation:
- The readability of the brochures, specifically by protecting the commonplace extract of the costs on the first web page and the expression of costs on an annual foundation;
- The readability of the tariff data paperwork by requiring that there be just one package deal that’s comparable between banks.
Notes
(1) Average calculated from a examine of the brochures of the 21 consultant institutions in response to the Annual Report of the Observatory of Bank Tariffs 2020, CCSF.
(2) Estimate primarily based on market shares estimated by bank in Conditions of entry to monetary companies for households residing under the poverty line, CCSF, 2020. NB: the query was addressed to all shoppers.
(3) “There might be nonetheless room for enchancment [en matière de lisibilité des tarifs]. It is a market initiative that should be continued […] I promise that we’ll ask this query once more ”. Intervention of A. Pannier-Runacher, at the time Secretary of State to the Minister of Economy and Finance, on May 28, 2020 in the Senate.
