Customers in countries like Australia pay around £60 per year for their banking, something which I have to say, I would much rather do than have it subsidised by disproportionate charging regimes we are subjected to in the UK. 

 Other countries such as Japan, charge for cash withdrawals from ATMs and in America most bank customers can’t go overdrawn.  I have been involved in some lively debates about this issue and have to say that my feelings are that if we have to pay a fee for banking then so be it. 

I personally think it is better than the unlawful and obscene penalty charging regime that currently sees the banks extract an estimated £4.7bn in penalty charges each year, often from the most vulnerable of society.  Others may have had the odd slip up by only a few pounds and this has led to charges taking them into an unauthorised OD causing a snowballing effect as the charges escalate.  

Angela Knight, mouthpeice of the British Bankers Association, refused to speculate on how banks would react if the OFT test case went against them but pointed out that elsewhere other models were fixed fees, which a growing number of anti penalty re-claimers are concerned about and almost certainly a fee at the ATM machine. An EU enquiry seemed to dispel fears by those who are against the reclaiming of unlawful penalty charges, and who can often be found painting re-claimers as being selfish and uneducated in finances and budgeting, as it outlined ‘The weighted average fee for running a personal bank account in the EU25 countries are just 14 euros a year working out at about (£9.50). 

Others fear that the banks may wish to lose the test case as they may wish to charge customers for accounts but due to the market being fiercely competitive nobody wants to make the first move.   This could be true but I personally don’t think that this is a result of the penalty charges debate.  As a re-claimer myself, I have never denied that the banks should charge customers for going overdrawn without authorisation, or for having a direct debit refused. 

What I don’t agree with is the fact that the banks profit from an unlawful penalty and that their charges are disproportionate to their actual losses.  The charges that a bank should, and we all agree could, reclaim themselves should be proportionate to the actual liquidated costs.

Read more: http://money.guardian.co.uk/saving/banks/story/0,,2150902,00.html