Marianne Lake, CEO consumer banking, JP Morgan
Email costs money but few people pay for it. Banking costs money too, and the US’s biggest consumer bank is about to make that real for customers by starting to charge for current accounts, largely known there as checking accounts.
“An exec with JPMorgan Chase, the nation's biggest retail bank, warned the perk could go away in the not-too-distant future”, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Marianne Lake – the CEO of consumer and community banking who also is on the short list to eventually replace Jamie Dimon – said Chase might have to eliminate free checking as well as other free services such as wealth-management tools as a result of new rules that would cap late-payment and overdraft fees.
The Chase move would affect about 86 million customers, and other banks would likely follow suit, reports MSN.
Lake maintains that Chase would have no choice but to pass on the costs of the new rules to customers, though the Journal quotes the head of an economic think tank disputing that. The new rules remain in limbo pending a legal challenge, and it's also possible they might be weakened or even eliminated if Donald Trump wins in November.
Fortune notes that a ‘customer revolt’ took place more than a decade ago when big banks threatened to impose a service fee on debit cards because of regulatory changes of that era, and few banks went through with it.
“That could happen again, especially as consumers struggle with inflation and higher costs of living, but it's not certain,” writes Chris Morris.
In reality, many “free” bank accounts have hidden and expensive overdraft fees that cover the cost of doing business, at least in US practice.
• Reprinted from the Lafferty Daily Bulletin