10 months ago I finally changed my bank account…after almost 19 years at Standard Bank, I finally had enough of their fees and their complete lack of interest in me as a client and I moved to Nedbank – for no other reason than that they offered a very attractive fee structure.
For far too long I had been a “prestige” client of Std Bank – which I finally worked out, meant that I had the “privilege” of paying higher fees and little else – a full R185 per month (or R2220 per year) for a current account. I hardly ever went into the bank, hardly every used a cheque, never went into overdraft and most of my banking was via the internet.
The equivalent offering at Nedbank was R65 per month (R780/year).
So with some sense of dread at the thought of notifying everyone and sorting out the debit orders I finally moved. And it was pretty painless…and over the past 10 months I have now saved myself R1200 in bank fees!
Of course bank fees increase every year and the Nedbank fee has now increased to R69 per month (6% increase)…this is completely acceptable (in the current inflation environment, my opinion). At the same time, Standard Bank’s fees have increased to R199/month (7.5%).
Yes, there are a few differences in internet banking that have taken some time to get used to and I still think that Nedbank’s internet offering is the worst in SA but with a saving of R1560 per year, I can put up with that.
So if you are stuck in the fee “headlights” where you know that you really should be making a change but have not yet gotten around to it mostly because of the fear of making the change, just do it! It is not nearly as painful as the banks would have us believe. And if more people voted with their feet, there would be more competition and better pricing. So, in the words of my old bank, I’m “moving forward”!
