BSP reduces fees

By MARK HAIHUIE
THE Bank South Pacific has further reduced services charges and bank fees in a bid to give customers more affordable access to its financial services.
Chief executive officer Robin Fleming said the bank had progressively been reducing its charges over the past five years.
“This is not one of the things we have just started now, as we have been reducing our fees for over five years. And as always, there has been an ongoing review of fees,” he said.
He said the bank was expected to forgo
K50 million in revenue because of the fee reductions this year.
“BSP has made a conscious decision not to pass on any of the increased costs of business over the past five years,” he said. “We have also made every effort to reduce fees and make our products more attractive.”
The changes, effective from on Friday, sees zero service fees for:

• transaction account fees for dormant accounts;
• branch deposits and withdrawals;
• deposits at agents;
• mobile banking alerts; and
• Statement mailing and duplicate statements.

Other fee reductions are from mobile banking-easipay top-ups and bill pays fees reduced from K1 and K1.50 to K0.50 respectively.
BSP has also removed service fees for:
Personal loan settlement;
Personal Property Investment Loan service; Housing loan service. The bank has also got rid of the BSP EFTPOS fee for merchants.
The reductions followed calls by Independent Consumer and Competition Commission in June on the bank to reduce its fees and pass on the benefits to consumers from the profit it is declaring this year.