One of America’s biggest banks warns about checking account charges

One of America’s biggest banks has issued a stark warning about looming charges on checking accounts.

The CEO of consumer and community banking at JPMorgan Chase has revealed it is planning to pass on the costs of higher regulation to its customers.

Marianne Lake warned that rules to cap overdraft and late fees from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will make regular banking significantly more expensive for Americans.

She said Chase would have to charge its 86 million customers for now-free services like checking accounts if the rules become law.

‘The changes will be broad, sweeping and significant,’ she told The Wall Street Journal. ‘The people who will be most impacted are the ones who can least afford to be, and access to credit will be harder to get.’

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing an $8 cap on late credit card payments and a $3 cap for overdraft fees.

It is also considering a limit on debit-card fees and the amount banks can charge companies like Venmo and CashApp to access and use customer data.

Lake believes America’s leading banks will follow Chase in passing on the costs to customers.

She insisted basic services people are used to like checking accounts, credit score trackers and planning tools, will most likely not be free anymore.

‘It is not practical for many of the services to be free if we won’t be able to draw from those profit pools,’ she said.

But Dennis Kelleher, president of economics think tank Better Markets, said: ‘The banks say that their only option is to pass on their costs to customers, but that’s not true.

‘Yet again, banks are dressing up their attempts to maximize their own profit under the guise of what’s good or bad for customers.’

Banks have launched appeals and filed lawsuits, mostly in the Northern District of Texas, to stop the changes from going ahead.

The rule to cap credit card late fees was passed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in March but a coalition of banks sued to stop it from becoming law. It is now pending appeal before a judge.

The average late payment fee from American banks is $32 per statement. Capping the penalty at a quarter of that level means 45 million credit card users will save an average of $220 a year.

Click here to resize this module

The agency said that over the last decade, banks have hiked late fees using ‘the excuse of inflation’ to create an ‘irresistible revenue stream’.

The rule will benefit the poorest Americans most – those who readily find themselves unable to pay off their credit card balances and rack up fees as a result.

Despite the cap not becoming law yet, some companies are prepared to pass on any costs to their customers.

However, Dan Goerlich, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, does not think it will be easy to pass on the fees.

‘Most customers can access retail banking easily and seamlessly today,’ he said.

‘It might be disadvantageous to keep services at zero cost, but banks’ hands could be forced by other competitors who will offer customers low-cost services.’