ANDREA NUCIFORO JR. – ‘Concepts are great’

If passed, a bill filed by Rep. Jarrett T. Barrios, D-Cambridge, promises to stir up what has until now been a conflict evidenced in a flurry of press releases.

Barrios’ bill, the Bank Fee Disclosure Act, would require banks and credit unions to post their fees for accounts at scheduled intervals on a state Web site. While the bill designates the treasurer’s Web site, Barrios said he is open to posting the information on either the state treasurer’s or the commissioner of banks’ site.

The idea for the bill came from the recent plethora of mergers and consolidations and the numerous complaints of exorbitant fees, he said. The typical bank’s answer to consumer complaints about high fees is that they can go to another bank, he said. “But it’s not always easy to get the information, even among local banks, on the different fee structures and different accounts available from the banks,” said Barrios.

While consumer groups, the state Division of Banks and the Treasurer’s Office support the idea of the postings, they differ on whether it should be made law.

Within the last year, both the Treasurer’s Office and the DOB announced plans to post such fees on their respective Web sites. But Commissioner Thomas J. Curry was first to launch a site.

More than 200 banks now participate on the DOB’s site, said Curry, and the information was last updated March 16.

Curry said although his site is not exciting, it gets the job done.

“We don’t believe at this time, given what we have, that there’s a compelling need for a statutory directive. We think that the visuals may not be that great, but the underlying information that’s on our Web site really does do what the representative’s bill is seeking, which is to provide easy and complete access on relevant checking account features and costs,” said Curry.

While Curry wouldn’t state he opposes the bill outright, he said, “I think the question you have to answer is, do you need a statute? Statutes by their nature are very rigid, frozen in time to accomplish the same things. If it should turn out that there are problems collecting the data, then there might be a different story. But I think what we’ve seen to date, the underlying goal has been accomplished.” Throughout his tenure, Curry often has made the case for regulation in lieu of legislation.

Although the Treasurer’s Office takes pains to point out their Web site – expected to launch at the end of the month – is different in significant ways from the DOB’s, Assistant Treasurer Dwight Robson said Treasurer Shannon P. O’Brien shares Curry’s view that banks are voluntarily sharing the information.

“The treasurer’s position has always been the more disclosure, the better,” said Robson.

“The intent of this legislation is being fulfilled through a cooperative joint venture between the Treasurer’s Office and banks and credit unions throughout the state,” Robson added.

Although over 90 percent of banks submit information to the DOB for posting on its Web site and over two-thirds have responded to the treasurer’s survey, Barrios said a law is still necessary.

“Without legislation, they essentially send questionnaires to the banks,” said Barrios. The incentive for providing information back to the commissioner is also questionable, according to both Barrios and MassPIRG.

‘Service to Banks’
Deirdre Cummings, MassPIRG consumer program director, said that although Curry deserves a lot of credit for being the first to launch such a site, it doesn’t go quite far enough.

“The site that we have up there now is great, given that we didn’t have anything like this before. But here’s a government Web site that’s providing a direct link to banks. It’s a service to banks,” said Cummings, referring to Web site links to bank homepages on the DOB site.

Cummings also points out that while some may consider the law an additional, albeit small, burden for banks, federal law already mandates the disclosure.

Each bank is required to keep a schedule of fees on hand for consumers who request the information. She suggests the ideal requirement would include disclosing fees to a Web site and then providing a link from the state site to the bank’s site where banks would have to post the entire fee schedule.

“The other thing to remember here is, banks are backed by taxpayer dollars. They are all insured by FDIC. So they are insured by the taxpayers. Yes, they owe something to us as a condition of getting that insurance. This, I think, is a fair and important way to elevate the power of the consumer, and all we are [talking about] is providing information,” she said.

Kevin F. Kiley, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Massachusetts Bankers Association, said he doesn’t see the need for a law, especially given that there are going to be two Web sites devoted to the information.

“Why do you need a statute that mandates that you have to collect this data when people are voluntarily doing it?” he said. The MBA initially sent out a memo to its members asking them not to respond to the treasurer’s survey, but have since had discussions and are “working with them to refine different aspects of it,” said Kiley.

A hearing on the bill before the Committee on Banks and Banking is scheduled for Tuesday, May 8.

“I think the concepts are great,” said Sen. Andrea Nuciforo Jr., D-Pittsfield, committee co-chairman. “Providing more information to consumers can hardly be called a bad thing.”

Nuciforo agreed that most of the information is available to consumers with a little digging, but added, “I think the idea of making sure that consumers can find in one place the information relative to the cost of bank service is both good for consumers and nominally burdensome on banks.”

If the committee favorably receives the bill, the next task may prove to be more contentious. That is, whether to make the reporting mandatory to the Treasurer’s Office or the DOB.

“We originally were going to go with the Division of Banks on this. But we opted to go to the treasurer. That is to say, to require the banks to submit their information to the treasurer because at the time, we had a commitment from the treasurer that she wanted this information, wanted to work with it and wanted to make sure we were working with a receptive agency,” said Barrios.

“Since that time, the Division of Banks has moved forward with their Web site. I’m not particular about which one, or if we required information to go to both. I just want to have an agency which is not hostile, rather embracing of this legislation,” said Barrios.

Although they’ve pledged to work with others on the issue, officials in the Treasurer’s Office take pains to point out that they were the first to come up with the idea.

“I don’t think they’re going to be the exact same kind of Web database. One of the reasons ours is taking a little bit longer – besides the fact that we’re doing it in-house – is that we were concerned that the information would become dated very quickly. So the database has been developed in such a way that would allow banks and credit unions to update their information online,” said Robson. Participating banks, he noted, will be assigned a password in order to access and change data about their fees and products.

“The other thing is it’s an interactive database. It won’t simply be a list of banks and banking products in a spreadsheet,” Robson said.