The Bank of Ireland have planned to bring in a flat rate fee structure and some other changes to. These changes will affect almost 40% of the bank’s customers as they will have to pay additional charges for their current accounts.
Including the ATM charges and other 26 different transaction fees will be discarded by the bank as the impose a new €6 per month subscription charge.
The BoI said that irrespective of the account balance or the transit details, all customers will soon pay the same flat fee.
“The new pricing structure is simple and transparent, and responds to customer feedback that the current range of charges is complex and hard to keep track of,” the bank said.
The new change will also see the suspension of all kinds of ‘no transaction fees’ offers too. Meanwhile this change forces the customers to maintain a minimum balance of €3,000 in their account for an entire quarter to avoid charges.
The introduction of flat fee charge will benefit many of the customers, but a 10% of customers, who were avail of the no transaction fee offer will have to pay an annual fee of € 72 rather than the current € 20. A 30% of low transaction account owners will also end up in paying high.
Bank of Ireland also started the scheme of providing the provision for opening personal accounts using their mobile phones. Customers will be able to open an account within 10 minutes by providing the digital copy of rightful documents.
Gavin Kelly, chief executive of BoI’s retail banking division said, “We’ve completely overhauled our digital account opening process to make it easier and quicker than ever to open an account with us,”
He also said that “We’re also making banking charges easier to understand by doing away with 26 different fees and charges and replacing them with a simple flat fee, a similar pricing model to Netflix or Spotify subscriptions where you pay the same every month and consume as much as you want,” Meanwhile the bank also made it clear that seniors, students and graduates will be provided with free banking services.