Starting on Aug. 1, banks will only be allowed to charge application fees for personal loans once and must take the initiative to clearly explain various fees so that customers will be better informed, the Financial Supervisory Commission’s (FSC) banking bureau said yesterday.
The regulation change, announced in January, is intended to prevent lenders from shifting revenues previously received as interest to account maintenance fees or other regular monthly charges, the bureau said.
Some banks had advertised zero-interest personal loans to attract customers. However, the move had raised concerns that lenders might collect other fees on a monthly basis to offset the loss of interest income, the bureau said.
To avoid that, the commission said it has defined application fees as a one-time charge. Therefore, banks must not collect such fees again under a different name, the bureau stipulated.
In addition, banks should compare the various fees with interest rates so customers can better weigh the costs before taking out personal loans, the bureau said.
Even so, there are concerns that banks may impose a large number of one-time charges on consumers. In response, the bureau said the application fees should account for only a minor percentage of the personal loan’s amount, meaning that an unreasonable one-time charge is not allowed.
No banks have been promoting interest-free personal loans since the policy change was announced, the bureau said.
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day