OUR POSITION

Suggested forward steps:

1.   The Office of Fair Trading must assure consumers and parliamentarians that its investigation has properly considered the following issues:

• A number of different investigations have concluded that a more appropriate level of charge would be between £2 and £4.
  
  
• In the last six years bank charges have risen dramatically, far above the rate of inflation.  The OFT’s decision should include details on appropriate charges for the last six years so that consumers do not lose out.
  
  If a decision does not include an acceptable level of charge, banks will attempt to counter claim charges deemed acceptable at current levels against claims for historic charges and derive an unfair advantage, which may still have to be resolved in the courts and may clog up the court system. again.
  
  
• The fact that many transactions are carried out automatically without any human intervention, and are therefore a very low cost to the banks.

2.   The OFT should drop its test case, which has had unintentionally benefited the banks, and the Financial Ombudsman could intervene in the public interest to end the moratorium on individual claims, allowing the backlog of cases to process.

• People are still being charged penalties with no course of legal redress, this delay is making people worse off, and allowing banks to ignore their customers.
  
  
• Claims relating to bank charges on overdrawn balances are being compensated by accruing interest at the standard rate of 8%. However, the actual interest being charged by the banks on overdrawn balances are vastly more than 8%, so delays in meeting these claims are costing the claimants even more. This is grossly unfair on claimants as it allows the banks to benefit from delay.
  
  
• The OFT should liaise with the FSA and the Banking ombudsman and the banks to agree the conduct of the banks in handling future claims.