For several days, the SG Bank website has been barred with a conspicuous and unusual red banner. Why this red alert on the site of the former Socit Générale? Here is the explanation.
It’s hard to miss it: for several days, a red banner has crossed the home page of the SG website intended for individual customers, as well as that dedicated to opening an online bank account. In its center, the following text: With the agreement of the Nanterre Public Prosecutor’s Office, a transactional fine of 4.5 million euros was concluded with Socit Générale. This agreement follows an investigation carried out by the services of the DDPP of Hauts-de-Seine, relating to deceptive commercial practices.
The affixing of this banner on its showcase site, obviously, is part, like the fine, of the sanction negotiated with the General Directorate for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Repression (DGGCRF). The latter’s investigation, carried out between April 2019 and January 2021 at the headquarters of the Defense Bank, highlighted facts relating to the offense of deceptive commercial practice, relating to unjustified intervention commission deductions.
Bank charges: why Socit Generale will pay 4.5 million euros in fines
Facts that Societe Generale did not wish to contest, preferring to compromise to avoid legal proceedings. However, she tried to justify herself. As soon as it was identified in 2020, Socit Générale decided to put an end to this pricing practice which resulted from a computer configuration error in the application of intervention commissions, explains the bank in a press release. It also specifies that all individual customers of the SG network in France affected by these undue deductions of intervention commissions have been fully reimbursed.
A precedent in 2017 at BPCE?
What did this configuration error consist of in the application of intervention commissions, these bank fees charged (8 euros each in general) for each operation carried out on an account exceeding the authorized overdraft?
In a article published on its website, 60 million consumers try a hypothesis. For this, it draws on a precedent: in 2017, the magazine denounced the new pricing rules for intervention commissions put in place by the banks of the BPCE group, the Banque Populaire and the Caisse d’Epargne, which had ended up by moving back.
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With this new system, as soon as the account ended the day beyond the authorized overdraft, all operations of the day were subject to an intervention commission of 8 euros, including those which had taken place when the account was in credit, recalls the magazine. Which on average doubled the total amount of fees. Very lucrative for the bank, terrible for the customer.