Bank of South Pacific (BSP) fees outrageous

The managing director of Bank South Pacific (BSP), Mr. Ian Clyne's claims for BSP's retail banking making 'zero profits' is nonsense. How many times have we seen Bank South Pacific making millions of kina annually as shown in it's financial reports. Mr. Clyne failed to tell the thousands of customers throughout Papua New Guinea how many times Bank South Pacific made a loss.

To simply say, fees are increased to aim at trying to make banking easier and more assessable to as many Papua New Guineans as possible is laughable. How many times has Mr. Clyne got out of that comfortable office and visited major towns during busy paydays and weeks? Customers had to wait long hours in long queues to withdraw or deposit their cash. This gets worse and worse each day in centers like Mount Hagen, for example. This this the kind of service that Mr. Clyne trying to provide to his customers?

So many BSP customers seem to wonder why Bank South Pacific charges hefty fees for ATM balance check, over the counter deposits, ATM mini statements, check clearance, and merchant EFTPOS withdrawals. They should be seen as value added services. For a poor farmer in the village who goes to Bank South Pacific to deposit his one hundred kina (K100)might be ripped off by the bank and hopeful he might end up with half or even less than his previous balance.

This is frustrating for so many customers who have worked hard to have that money but over time, the bank continues to use the money in their accounts just under the pretext of "better services for it's customers" Let me tell you, Mr. Clyne, since the privatisation we've not seen an efficient and effective services provided by the Bank of South Pacific. All the fees that you're imposing on the poor customers are free in most countries including the United States.

Papua New Guineans doesn't have that opportunity to choose among the banks to do their banking because they're few banks in Papua New Guinea and therefore, you're taking advantage of their hard earned cash. We are not totally trying to oppose your banking 'service' fees but it should be done in the best interest of your customers.

The service fees for BSP published in the papers were too much for a village farmer to do his/her banking. Mr. Clyne, you mentioned that most of the 500,000 customers of BSP keep small balances but if you did your research, all of these are people from the village and they need to keep a low balance let alone the required twenty kina (K20) minimum balance which most people can't afford in a week.

Ultimately, Bank of South Pacific customers, if I were you; I would probably find a new bank with customer friendly fees for their services and a bit lenient on the banking activities with them. In other words, there should be a level playing field. The opposite is true for BSP and it's 500,000 plus customers nationwide.

Jika Kupingal

Colorado, USA

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@