The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Monday said it would finish a comprehensive examination of banks by July to see if they have been overcharging clients through default fines or interest.
The inspection comes in the wake of the commission’s discovery earlier this month that one bank made NT$10 million (US$324,517) from default fines.
Banks found overcharging clients must return the money, commission Chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said, adding that the commission would report to the legislature’s Finance Committee within one month after completing the inspection.
The commission has asked the Bankers Association to address the issue by requiring all banks to conduct an audit and report the results to the commission, Examination Bureau head Wang Li-chuan (王儷娟) said.
Regulations bar banks from fining clients three times in a row, but one bank charged its clients more than four times, Wang said, adding that each fine cannot exceed NT$500.
The bank’s overcharged fines totaled about NT$10 million, she said, adding that it would be asked to return the money.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator William Tseng (曾銘宗) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee that the US regulator in June found that Citibank had overcharged its credit-card customers US$335 million in interest since 2011.
Citibank Taiwan Ltd (台灣花旗) was also fined NT$2.5 million by the commission after a system update glitch caused it to overcharge its credit-card clients, causing an estimated 300,000 clients to lose a total of NT$31 million, Tseng said, urging Koo to initiate a complete check.
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