The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday said that it has told six local banks to quickly return a total of NT$6.98 million (US$231,932) to their credit card clients for interest rate overcharges on revolving credit.
“It seems that the six banks have a problematic calculating system, and we have requested them to improve their systems,” Koo said during a question-and-answer session at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee in Taipei.
He did not name the banks, although Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Michelle Lin (林楚茵) urged him to do so, telling lawmakers only that several were privately owned banks.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
DPP Legislator Chuang Jui-hsiung (莊瑞雄) said the banks should be penalized by the commission for taking advantage of their clients.
Koo’s comments came after a report from the commission’s Inspection Bureau on Monday said that routine inspections last year found that some banks have been overcharging customers by rounding up their interest rate fees to the nearest integer, instead of rounding them off as stipulated in their credit-card contracts.
Banks are also required to calculate the interest based on each cardholders’ payment deadline, instead of the account closing date, but some have failed to do so and overcharged, the report said.
The six banks would be asked to assign a non-credit card division — such as compliance or information technology division — to set up a new mechanism to confirm that their credit card divisions are doing the calculation correctly, a commission official told the Taipei Times by telephone.
However, cardholders should also pay attention to their bills and calculate the interests themselves to see if they are being charged the correct amount, the official said.
“We still encourage consumers to use credit cards as a payment tool instead of a way to take out a loan, to avoid a heavy financial burden,” the official added.
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