In its annual report published this Friday, the DGCCRF highlights the bad practices of certain banks in terms of banking incident fees. Socit Générale was thus fined a very heavy fine.
The Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Repression (DGCCRF) struck hard. At the beginning of January, it announced that it had imposed a settlement fine of 4.5 million euros on Socit Générale for unjustified intervention commission deductions.
A sanction proportionate to the seriousness of the facts, proposed with the agreement of the Nanterre public prosecutor’s office, and accepted by the bank. This recognized a computer configuration error in the application of intervention commissions.
Socit Générale: why this red alert on the SG website?
Deceptive business practice
In addition to this dirty fine, the red and black bank specified that all individual customers affected by these undue deductions of intervention commissions have been fully reimbursed. We do not know today how much the amount of these reimbursements is worth.
But Socit Générale is not the only bank in the DGCCRF’s sights. This is what emerges from the annual report of this service reporting to the Ministry of the Economy. A 32-page document presented to the press this Friday. 39 of the 181 banking institutions audited in 2023 were found to be abnormal. In addition to 36 warnings, 3 reports were drawn up for deceptive commercial practices, indicates the report which does not specify the names of the banks in question.
More than 12,000 reports from consumers
The Fraud Repression indicates that banking establishments are subject to investigation each year, particularly in terms of gaps in consumer information, operating irregularities or undue incidents, etc.
A report published at the end of last summer by the DGCCRF already noted that out of 315 banking establishments audited by its investigators in 2021, 70 were in anomaly regarding incident fees, or a little more than 22%. According to the DGCCRF, these practices are illustrated in particular by exceeding the regulatory ceilings for fees charged to consumers.
More broadly, last year, banks, insurance companies and even mutual insurance companies were the subject of 12,270 reports from consumers, according to the DGCCRF annual report.
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