Ensure a common rate for banking services
Practice of overcharging the customers has become a regular phenomenon in the private scheduled banks of the country. In a belated move, Bangladesh Bank (BB) on Thursday decided to check such practices. The central bank by this time had received a large number of complaints from the clients of a number of private banks. The initiative in favour of the clients has thus ushered a hope among the account holders who want to tap the opportunity of the modern transactions system, but were obliged to keep themselves away in fear of paying various charges involved in operation of an account in the banks.
A report of an English daily on Saturday said, BB had already taken initiative to create a separate link on its website to provide the banks’ service charge. The central bank on its website will publish the schedule of charge list of every bank so that they will not be able to overcharge their customers. This actually reveals the fact that banks are depriving their clients in the name of service charges breaching the norms and regulations of the Bangladesh Bank. This had happened due to lax monitoring and the supervision of the central bank accompanied by some of the officials who are more willing to make more profits for their own respective banks. But they forget the true objectives of modern banking — that making profits alone should not only be a motto of an honest banker, serving the customers who not only keep their money as deposits in the banks but their trusts should also be one that be counted.
Charging different service charge(s) is not now very unusual in the banks in Bangladesh. Different banks charge different rates, but they are on average on the high side, which is taxing for the customers. ‘Make profit at all costs’ seems a prime motive of the banks, perhaps due to an over crowded market though the state-owned banks are still charging moderately. Banks usually assign high maintenance cost and establishment charges as the causes of charging high rates.
We do believe that banks are not charity firms and thus cost charging is not otherwise immoral in business. But it should be according to a standard and not due to their whims or wishes. It must be rational and uniform at all points. Our hope is that as the custodian of the banking sector of the country, Bangladesh Bank, the central authority and also the protector of the interest of the ordinary clients, should protect the customers’ rights for the sake of the quick growth of the banking economy in Bangladesh. The central bank’s popular desire to reach banking at every doorstep can only be possible if the rights of the millions of account holders are protected effectively.
