Bangladesh Bank re-fixes fees for banking services

Bangladesh Bank has set anew the fees for a cluster of services so that the banks cannot charge their customers at will.

In a notice on Thursday, the central bank included all the circulars on the charges,

including those for account opening and bookkeeping, deposit, loan, and remittances.    

To open a savings account, the banks can charge Tk 500 while a current account will cost a customer Tk 1,000.

The banks cannot stipulate minimum deposit for accounts with special facilities. Until now, some banks mandated that the customer must keep minimum Tk 2,000 or Tk 5,000 or, in some cases, Tk 50,000 to Tk 1 million in these accounts.

To keep accounts, banks can charge the customers every six months. But they cannot charge the customers if the balance in a savings account is Tk 10,000.

They can charge between Tk 100 and Tk 250 for balance from Tk 10,000 to Tk 1 million. The rate will be maximum Tk 300 for balance over Tk 1 million.

No bookkeeping fees can be charged on accounts with special facilities.

The fees for transferring an account from one branch to another within the same district have been fixed at maximum Tk 50 and to other districts at Tk 100.

There will be no fee for account activation.

To close a savings account, a customer will have to pay maximum Tk 200, and current and special notice deposit accounts maximum Tk 300.

Accounts with special facilities mean those offered to a particular type of citizens, such as farmers, students, freedom fighters and homeless people.

LOANS

The banks can charge a client maximum 0.5 percent of loans of up to Tk 5 million as processing fee, or Tk 15,000, whichever is lower.

The processing fee will be maximum 0.3 percent for over Tk 5 million loan, but it cannot exceed Tk 20,000.

The customers will not have to pay fees to apply for loans.

The banks cannot take service charge, loan management fee, monitoring or supervision fees, risk premium or any such fees other than interests.

The fee for repayment ahead of the schedule will be maximum 0.5 percent of the dues. No such fee can be charged for loans to the cottage, micro and small industries.

Earlier, the banks charged the clients up to 2 percent of the dues for repayment ahead of schedule.