BSP drops deposit charge

National, Normal
Source:

The National

BANK South Pacific (BSP) Ltd has clarified that the 2% cash handling fee effective last Wednesday ‘only’ applied to cash withdrawals on amounts above K5,000.
And the 2% charged for deposits had been cancelled and replaced with a cash counting service fee at a flat rate of K20 for any cash deposits more than K10,000 (or cash and cheque deposits where the cash component was more than K10,000).
BSP management dropped the 2% charge on “deposits” last Friday, two days after it was introduced nationwide last Wednesday.
BSP’s general manager for retail banking Kevin McCarthy said yesterday that “the cash handling fee on cash withdrawals of 2% on amounts above K5,000 still remains”.
BSP management’s decision to cancel the 2% fee on “deposits” came after it heard the views of its customers, most of them expressing dissatisfaction over this new fee on top of BSP’s recently announced bank service and transaction fees.
Some BSP customers claimed the bank was imposing a lot of fees on customers despite reportedly enjoying excellent financial results for the first half of this year.
Meanwhile, BSP said it was implementing new risk management systems with the aim to greatly improve its ability to detect fraudulent activities on both external and internal fraud.
This was after BSP chairman Noreo Beangke revealed that the bank had made an abnormal provision of K7.5 million to cover a likely loss from a series of fraudulent cheque transactions made by a customer.
“We have taken a conservative provision against this possible loss which was an external fraud, but are working to mitigate the loss,” Mr McCarthy said.
He also added that collective loan provisions had increased marginally compared to the first half of last year.He said provisioning models had been re-tuned to incorporate the potential adverse effects on operating conditions of borrowers in the domestic economy.