Discrepancy in Romanian banking prices – second biggest in the world

The difference between the highest and the lowest price in the Romanian banking system is 61 percent, which places Romania second after the United States, which has 92 percent. The average percentage of the 25 countries in the study was 27 percent. Croatia came after Romania with a 55 percent difference in prices.

Romania was included in the survey for the first time as a sample for the report, along with Croatia, India, Japan and South Africa. The country has nine of its banks included in the survey sample: HVB Bank Bancpost, CEC, Alpha Bank, Banca Transilvania, ING Bank, Raiffeisen Bank, BRD and BCR.

The source of fees for core banking in ranking the nine Romanian banks surveyed comes equally from account management, cash utilization and payments, each covering around 30 percent of the total. Exception handling accounts for only a small portion of the fees, according to the report.

“Romanian banks have generally adopted transaction-based pricing approaches with fixed fees per transaction, depending on the amount. Internet banking is not yet widespread, but it is increasing fast, enabling customers to forgo the branches,” found the report. Future pricing approaches are likely to direct customers towards automated channels for common operations, reserving branches for more advanced services, a trend that is is observed globally, the report authors underline.

The transaction-based approach means that fees are applied to transactions, often including any form of debit like checks, money transfer, point-of-service purchase, ATM withdrawals and credit, such as deposits at the desk or at an ATM.

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Fees consist of a fixed sum per transaction, a percentage of the transaction amount, or both, explains the report.

The World Banking Report analyses 180 banks worldwide.

Corina Saceanu