$503 Million Fine for French Banks
The French competitions authority have fined 11 of the countries top banking groups for colluding to fix the price of clearing cheques electronically, with a $503 million fines. (£330 million)
The Autorité de la Concurrence issued one of the biggest fines ever impossed on a retail banking group, Crédit Agricole which is France’s largest bank by retail branches with a total fine of €103.9m – and the next in line was BPCE, the mutual bank and second-largest retail lender with €90.9m to pay.
The countries leading bank in way of sales, BNP Paribas, was issued with a fine tital of €63.3m, and Société Générale and its Crédit du Nord sub were fined €60.5m.
One of the smallest fines issued was to The Banque de France, which is the states banking system – who were fined only €350,000 in relation to it’s retail activities.
Since the introduction of electronic clearance between banking services, the cost of “cheque clearing” has been reduced significantly. And, instead of passing on these savings to the customers, they began to charge a flat fee of 4.3cents per cheque to clear.
In the UK, this could well open up an old wound – which is clearing times for cheques. Whilst some banks will show cheques cleared the same day (because it is electronic and communicates daily) whilst others take anything from 3 to 5 days to do exactly the same job.
Personally, I have put this to test and walked in to a Lloyds TSB branch in my local town of Cheltenham, and requested a cheque be expressed. The member of staff told me that “by expressing a cheque does not actually clear it any faster.”
On a seperate ooccassion, I tried the same theory with a puppy look on my face saying that I needed the funds ceared to instruct payments from my account the same day. Within miniutes and, at a click of the button, I was told that the “cheque was clear.”
So, if it is that easy, why doesn’t it happen like that as standard?
Oh of course, it would mean that the banking system would probably lose millions in the process, and we would get ‘our’ money into ‘our’ accounts faster, leaving the bank without the 3 days play time to make money on stocks and shares… and we wouldn’t want that, would we?
