Tonight, the Central Bank is taking a closer look at all those excessive fees that the commercial banks charge you to use your own money.
The service fees to withdraw or transfer money continues to be an annoyance for depositors and, apparently, it's the same for the regulator. The Central Bank also believes that the excessive fees should be stopped. He's already issued a warning to the banks that come December they will target those excess ancillary fees. Jules Vasquez asked the governor about it today at a first ever Central Bank press briefing:
Reporter
"Is this something that you guys look at all the ancillary fees that banks charge people for their own money?"
Kareem Michael, Governor of the Central Bank of Belize
"We have also, I should let you know that we have developed a practice direction that should come into effect in December that will target some of these fees that we have deemed as unfair or excessive while I might not. It may not be in my best interest within the norm to call the bank's name. I'm sure the issue we are having is that a depositor across every point of access at a commercial bank is charged for that bank to keep his money. That I think stretches any sort of fairness or boundaries or consumer financial protection ideas that we may have. If you go to an ATM you're charged if you said let me run in for an over the counter it's $2 and then if you're doing an online you're looking at between 2-11 depending on the type of transactions that you're doing and that is not a situation where the central bank well i think it's not a practice in which the central bank should sit by and allow."
Belize Bank is the only bank that charges depositors fifty cents to make ATM withdrawals.
