About three-fourths of Americans with checking accounts agreed that banks should be required to better disclose the terms of the accounts, including bounced check fees, a recent survey by an arm of the Pew Charitable Trusts found.
The Pew Health Group, Pew’s health and consumer product safety group, is proposing that banks adopt a simple, one-page disclosure form outlining what fees are associated with checking accounts and explaining various overdraft options. The form is similar to the so-called Schumer box used for credit card disclosures.
The survey follows earlier Pew research that found the median length of a checking account disclosure document is 111 pages.
Support for better disclosure was strong, regardless of political affiliation. Even those who think the government is already adequately regulating banks support new rules requiring disclosure of account terms and overdraft fees, according to the poll. The telephone survey of 805 checking account holders was conducted in July by a bipartisan polling team on behalf of the health group’s Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project.
Over all, 83 percent of respondents said it would be a “positive change” to require banks to provide a summary of the overdraft options they offer, how the options work and a description of associated fees.
The data showed that 81 percent of Democrats, 66 percent of Republicans and 65 percent of independents favored Pew’s recommendations. It reported that 62 percent of Tea Party affiliates were also supportive.
The poll also found that 70 percent supported requiring banks to process transactions in the order they occurred, instead of from the highest dollar amount to the lowest dollar amount. Processing from high to low tends to result in more overdraft fees.
Do you think the proposed disclosure form makes sense? Would you suggest any changes?
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