Bankers late with adjustment of loan application processing fees

Banks continue to charge loan application processing fees calculated as a percentage of the value of the loan, although the law on loans to consumers in force since the end of last year requires them to charge clients a fixed amount regardless of the loan value.

Most banks used to charge a percentage of the loan value as their fee and the new regulations caught them off-guard. The clients that borrowed more money paid more, even though the bank did the same amount of work, because procedures by product category do not vary according to loan value.

BRD, Alpha Bank and UniCredit Tiriac continue to charge fees ranging from 1% through 3.5% of the value of the loan for consumer and mortgage credits, while other banks have included such fees into the value of the nominal interest at least for now, so as to comply with the requirements of the new law, according to the information available on their websites. Thus BCR, Banca Transilvania and Raiffeisen dropped the loan application processing fee, but raised the nominal interest by 0.25% to 5%.

The few banks charging fixed amount fees include Bancpost, CEC, ING and Citibank. Such fees range from 109 RON for consumer loans and 1,700 RON for a mortgage loan.