Bank charges: why UFC-Que Choisir asks the government to control excesses

Maud Descamps, edited by Mélanie Faure 3:58 p.m., June 07, 2022

The practices of French banks are in the sights of consumer associations.

Are they making too much profit on the backs of their customers in the red?

The UFC-Que Choisir calls on the government and asks it to intervene to control excessive bank charges, including incident fees that apply in the event of direct debit rejection, for example.

>> Find Europe midi in replay and podcast here

These are charges that are deducted when an operator such as EDF or your telephone operator deducts the amount of your bill from your account, but it is refused by your bank for lack of sufficient reserves.

And France is the European champion.

In France, bank charges are capped at 20 euros per refused direct debit.

By way of comparison, this is 17 times more than in Germany and eight times more than in Italy. 

Up to one billion euros in annual savings?

For UFC-Que Choisir, it is urgent that the government takes up the subject to limit its costs.

“If we just lowered those rates to match eight euros, which is the amount of the intervention commission which is another bank incident fee, consumers could save up to a billion euros every years", explains Mathieu Robin.

"This would keep France among the countries where these costs would be the highest, since we would still be beyond the prices charged in Belgium, Spain or Italy, while precisely allowing consumers to have power additional purchase in this period of very important crisis."

>> READ ALSO

- How are the new banks making their place in France

The consumer defense association has calculated the average duration of interventions made by a bank in the event of a direct debit being rejected.

It turns out to be less than 1 minute 30 - a very short intervention billed... very expensive.

Operations on which banks therefore make very large margins, very precisely around 86%, as UFC-Que Choisir points out.