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Bank loan fees chaotic
Businesses are complaining that they have to pay many different types of fees when getting bank loans.
Lac, a Business Director of an equipment and garment material trading company in Tan Binh district in HCM City, related that he has completed the procedures for borrowing money at Sacombank, Cho Lon branch. Lac said that he has to pay the so called ‘consultancy fee for making financial plan,’ of VND 2 million.
Regarding that fee, Tran Xuan Huy, General Director of Sacombank, said that the bank does not collect that kind of fee from all clients, while it only collects fees from the clients who use the bank's consultancy service.
In Lac’s case, Sacombank’s employees said that Lac received the consultancy service from the bank, and with the service, Lac could fulfill the procedures to be eligible to borrow money.
Meanwhile, Lac argued that he did not need to use the bank’s service as he borrowed money from the bank many times before.
He said that in 2008, the bank applied the contract signing service fee of VND 2 million. That kind of service fee has disappeared and has been replaced with the consultancy fee for making finance plans.
“I half-believed when I heard my employees reporting about that kind of fee, but I later realized that the fees exist after I came to banks myself,” said Dan, the owner of a garment company in district 10 in HCM City, which is now thirsty for capital.
A reporter from the local newspaper VnExpress went together with Dan last week to commercial banks to ask for loans. At the head office of An Binh Bank on Cach Mang Thang Tam Road in district 3, Dan met a credit employee, Chau, who gave detailed information about the procedures to get loans, the credit limit, disbursement rates, and the competitive interest rates applied by the bank.
During the conversation, the employee did not mention the fees the bank will collect from clients. When Dan asked about the additional fees, the employees from ABBank said that the clients will bear the insurance fee.
Before contacting ABBank, Dan went to many other banks, including Vietcombank and East Asia Bank, and none of them mentioned the insurance fee.
“I have been told that only in cases when clients borrow money to import and store specific types of commodities (inflammable commodities, for example), they have to bear insurance fees and they have to pay to insurance companies, not to banks,” Dan said.
Meanwhile, Dan borrows money to pay salaries to workers. Dan also said that his company will open an account at the bank, but ABBank’s employees still affirmed that the bank will collect insurance fees.
Regarding the insurance fee, Pham Quoc Thanh, Deputy General Director of ABBank, said that the bank does not sell insurance policies to clients, while clients will have to work with insurance companies.
“Clients have to take insurance policies, and this is considered one of the conditions for the bank to approve loans. If clients do not accept to pay for insurance policies, the bank will have to refuse to sign credit contracts,” Thanh said.
In order to get bank loans, businesses, besides the lending interest rates, have to pay many other types of fees. Chairman of the Board of Members of a limited trading and production company in district 11, HCM City, related that the company had to pay four types of fees (VND 5.5 million) when it borrowed money from the Techcombank Hau Giang branch, while the loan was worth only VND 250 million.
The chairman said that he could not understand what the kinds of fees were, as the bank officials abbreviated in the receipts. For example, the bank collected the ‘TSDB fee’ which he made the wild guess as ‘special assets’ and the reason for the collection was ‘TC,’ which he did not understand what it meant.
The VnExpress’ reporter tried to contact the bank to ask for the fee collection, but he was refused, while the bank’s staff said that they would explain to clients only. They said that every bank has its own policies.
Techcombank’s Deputy General Director Nguyen Thanh Long on March 21 sent a document to VnExpress, confirming that this was a client of Techcombank’s Hau Giang branch. Long said that the fees did not relate to the loaning, while they were the fees that the clients paid when using services of the third parties and Techcombank’s payment service.
Long affirmed that the fees in the contract were collected in accordance with the current laws.
The State Bank of Vietnam has prohibited collecting additional fees relating to credit. However, a lot of bank branches and transaction offices have spontaneously set up some kinds of fees, from several hundreds thousands VND to several millions VND.
Several kinds of fees are considered legal, like the fee for assessing mortgage assets, and the fees for using banks’ services.
Ho Huu Hanh, Director of the HCM City Branch of the State Bank of Vietnam, advised businesses to call the hot line at 08 38211230 – 04 38266344 in case they want to know which kinds of fees are legal.
VietNamNet, VNE
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