Account maintenance fees, bank cards, withdrawals, packages … The prices of daily banking services will increase at the start of 2022. Here are 5 tips to avoid these rate increases.
Like every year, around sixty bank brands will take advantage of the change of year to update their prices. Like every year, the price of some everyday products and services will increase. Always the same: account maintenance, bank card, branch operations, cash withdrawals …
Bank charges 2022: soaring prices
To endure these increases, year after year, is not inevitable. Solutions exist to escape it, and thus contain its bank bill. Here are our tips.
1. Limit access to ATMs
In 2022, the price of withdrawals outside your bank’s ATM network will increase further (+ 0.35%). Above all, the monthly quotas for free withdrawals are falling: 4 on average next year, against 4.33 currently. Clearly, access to cash is becoming more and more expensive. These costs are partially justified: each time you use an ATM from a competing establishment, your bank pays 89 euro cents to the establishment which has the automatic machine, to contribute to its maintenance. It is, however, possible to escape it.
The first thing to do, of course, is to privilege the distributors of your bank. None, in fact, yet invoice these internal withdrawals. If your preferred ATM does not belong to your bank, limit yourself to one or two large withdrawals per month, depending on the quota offered to you, rather than increasing the number of visits to distributors.
Another solution to avoid withdrawal fees: open an account in an online bank. With rare exceptions (such as the Essential offer from ING), their free or low-cost bank cards allow withdrawals free of charge from ATMs in the euro zone, or even outside them as well.
Online banking: the comparison of offers
2. Limit payments by check
The check has the immense advantage of being free. On closer inspection, however, this is not fully the case: its use potentially generates additional costs, the amount of which continues to climb. Example in 2022: + 4.87% for sending a new checkbook by regular mail or + 1.55% for opposition fees in the event of loss or theft.
To avoid these fees, the recipe is simple: limit your payments by check. Prefer other means of payment, which also have the merit of being much more secure: the transfer or debit to settle your bills; the bank card to pay for your purchases; or Paylib with friends, if your bank offers this free service, to send money to a loved one.
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3. Be autonomous
Transfer, modification of the limits of your card, request to send a check or even opposition to a bank card: these operations are becoming increasingly expensive. more expensive when carried out in an agency or via customer service by phone. The example of the transfer is particularly striking. Realized on your behalf by an advisor, they now cost more than 4,30euros pice. A price which has increased by nearly 21% in 10 years and will take another 3.60% next year. Carried out from your bank’s website or application, it is systematically free.
Our advice is therefore as follows: save money by carrying out these small daily operations independently. If you have a smartphone, start with download your bank’s mobile application and learn how to use it. It is often very simple, most of the banks having made great progress in terms of ergonomics. And it’s at least as secure as the agency or the web, smartphones equipped with very robust authentication devices (fingerprints, faces, irises, etc.).
4. Look at low cost offers
To meet the competition from new payment services, such as Nickel or Ma French Bank, the traditional networks now offer almost all a range of entry-level services, 2 euros per month. Called Kapsul la Socit Gnrale, Eko and Globe-Trotter au Crdit Agricole or Essentiel at LCL, these formulas consist of an account, a systematic authorization card without overdraft and a mobile application.
Eko, Kapsul, Nickel … What are 2 bullet bank accounts worth?
These formulas are intentionally limited. However, they may be sufficient for a person whose needs are limited to paying and being paid, and who manages his account remotely. Above all, they are much cheaper than any entry-level package. Or even the list price plus a systematic authorization bank card and account maintenance fees, two lines that continue to increase: respectively + 1.64% (for a Visa card) and + 1.28% in 2022 .
5. Negotiate or play the competition
We know that when it comes to bank charges, there is the rule (the prices indicated in the price brochures) and there is the practice (the charges actually levied). Get discounts, indeed, is possible. Cards, packages, payment fees for life insurance, mortgage application fees, early redemption fees … Almost all fees can be negotiated. On the condition, however, of being a good customer! That is, a person who has several tens of thousands of euros in savings, and who has multiple teams (account, home and auto insurance, credit, monitoring, etc.). Or the condition of being a young worker who wants to see his income increase rapidly.
And if the negotiation fails, you have the option ofopen a bank account in an establishment the softer pricing policy. The most competitive brands remain online banks. According to our ranking of the cheapest banks, a person who manages his account independently, has a classic bank card and makes some payments and withdrawals outside the euro zone, does not pay no bank charges at Boursorama Banque and Fortuneo. By comparison, at Crdit Coopratif, a bank with branches known for its low tariffs, this client pays around sixty euros in bank charges per year.
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