When it comes to the cost of living, the Trudeau government has completely neglected a group of big players who have lined their pockets in recent years: the banks.
Today, these banks have become a service as essential as grocery shopping.
We have no choice but to use them for our pay, our housing and our purchases while businesses use less and less cash…
The newspaper is filled with stories of citizens struggling with exorbitant bank charges!
It costs us dearly! About $250 per Canadian, according to a recent report, for monthly account fees, insufficient funds fees and for access to competing banks’ ATMs…
Let’s think about it: we have to pay to have access to our own money, even if everything is digital.
Ottawa should clean up these costs. An account with a few free transactions should be an essential service.
The government can go further!
Especially since, like our colleagues from Newspaper we recently told you, the mortgage bomb which is hitting homeowners hard has allowed banks to reap huge profits.
Credit cards
In addition to regulating the very high interest rates on credit cards, it could also limit the management fees charged by major credit card issuers to merchants!
The Canadian Federation of Independent Business says these fees range between 1.5% and 4% of an invoice’s total.
Money charged to all consumers which stifles small merchants!
Not advisors, salespeople!
The government would greatly help the population by better regulating the work of “financial advisors” in banks.
The show Marketplace of CBC revealed the practices of those who should be called sellers of financial products. They often don’t help their customers in any way.
“We are here to make money for the bank,” explains a Scotiabank “advisor”.
“I had to deceive my customers by selling them products they didn’t need,” says a BMO employee.
These banks take advantage of our lack of knowledge to push products with excessively high management fees and poor returns…
And know that at Desjardins, the situation is not always better. A former employee told me similar stories.
I found a so-called “prudent” fund whose management fees are 1.32% while the returns over the last 10 years were 1.1%.
The advisor will not tell you that this is a nice “prudent” way to lose money!
Faced with these examples, it is difficult to believe the Canadian Bankers Association, which assures that “the examples described do not reflect the experience” of clients.
The journalist made the same report 7 years ago!
Competition
As with groceries, competition is key…but Ottawa recently authorized the sale of HSBC Bank to RBC.
A federal budget is coming, we will see if the government really cares about Canadians’ wallets.
No one is going to cry about the fate of these banks which still made billions in profits last year.