Big Banks Bigger Fees 2012

Over the last dozen years or more, bank efforts to raise fee income have been bolstered by pliant regulators, who looked the other way while banks piled new fees onto deposit accounts and engaged in deceptive practices to earn more in fees. Regulators encouraged tens of billions of dollars in overdraft fee income by classifying “overdraft protection” products as “account features,” not loans.
Avoiding higher bank fees by shopping for a bank account is not easy. The lack of enforcement has even extended to the laws requiring simple disclosures, so consumers cannot shop around. This is not a new problem. In response to growing complaints about deceptive advertising following the 1980s deregulation, Congress had enacted the 1991 Truth in Savings Act.3 That law was intended to make it easier to shop around; by requiring banks to publish all deposit account-related fees in a schedule and making that schedule available to prospective customers.