Survey shows banks’ fees on retail loans hit 7.75% aside from interest charge

A retail loan is a facility offered to an individual by a commercial bank, a credit union, or a financial institution to purchase assets like property, vehicles, consumer electronics, etc.

The BoG survey showed that commercial banks charge five different fees on loans given to their retail customers.

The survey which looked at all charges imposed by banks on their various products and services covered all 23 banks currently operating in Ghana.

The survey mentioned that between October and December 2019, commercial banks charged five different fees including; arrangement fee, which is an administration charge made by lenders for arranging credit; processing fee, which is charged to cover the costs incurred by the lender on the loan process, as well as insurance fee which is applied, and the insurance premium added to the loan amount and paid back over the life of the loan.

Ecobank charged the highest fee of 7.75% followed by First National Bank-GHL Bank which has a lending fee of 5.25% on retail loans and Stanbic bank which charged 5.1% in lending fees on retail loans as of the end of December 2019.

Meanwhile, Cal Bank, Republic Bank and Bank of Africa each had 3% lending fees on retail loans each Access bank, Fidelity Bank and Barclays bank had fees ranging between 1.5 to 6.75%, 3.75 to 5.86% and 3.65 to 4.35% respectively.

United Bank for Africa charges as low as no fee to 2% on retail loans with Zenith Bank and Standard Chartered bank charging 2% – 3.5% and 2% – 2.5% respectively.

However, Consolidated Bank Ghana failed to provide any information on whether or not it charges lending fees for its loans as the survey showed the non-availability of data.

The survey showed that a bank may charge all of the five or at least one of the fees.