AIB

During the week I got a letter from AIB informing me that they are “in the process of standardising our current account products for personal customers”. It turns out that in the parlance of AIB banking argot ‘standardising’ means ‘extracting as much money as we can in fees’.

For the 25 years or so I have had a ‘cashsave’ account with AIB which, although providing minimal interest, has reciprocally been exempt from most transaction charges.

Not any more.

From July I bid sayonara to my cashsave account as AIB will, unbidden my me and many others I am sure too, convert it to a current account. This is because, according to the letter, “you typically use current account services such as Debit Card and/or Direct Debits on your above cashsave account”.

I use neither.

The letter further informs me that from September my account will be subject to a €4.50 quarterly maintenance charge, which adds up to €18 a year.

This is on top of the following charges:

ATM card €2.50 a year

Every time I use an ATM €0.20

and, this in particular riles me, every time I bank online €0.20

Furthermore, my AIB credit card is subject to annual stamp duty of €30, while any interest I may accrue on my savings is subject to a tax of 30%.

Now, to my non Irish readers the last two charges may at first sight appear as taxes and thus not really under the control of the bank, but AIB was nationalized in 2010.

So, I would contend that the account charges, the stamp duty and the savings tax are in fact all taxes - it is after all a government owned and ostensibly government run bank, and any decisions such as the one detailed in the letter about closing cashsave accounts, are thus government decisions. 

Take a step further back; we have a situation where a commercial bank, due to catastrophic mismanagement, had to be bailed out by the Irish taxpayer to the tune of some €3.7billion. Not content with receiving such a hugely generous ‘dig out’, this nationalized bank, ostensibly owned by the Irish people and (mis)managed for us by the Irish state, is determined to extract more money from the very same people who paid, through their taxes, for its rescue.

But that’s not the really rich part. 

To go back to the letter I received. Following the transaction fee explanation, it went on to inform me that I could “avail of maintenance and transaction free banking by maintaining a minimum daily statement balance of €2,500 in the fee quarter”.

This isn’t ‘free banking’, it’s a tax exemption for the rich.

Like I argued above, all these fees from a nationalized bank are effectively taxes. What’s more, they are regressive taxes, akin to VAT, in that they disproportionately impose a greater burden on those with lower incomes. Maintaining a minimum daily balance of €2,500 is a lot more difficult for those on low incomes than those on high.

Put bluntly, AIB and by proxy, our government, is screwing the poor while favoring the rich. 

Shame on them.