Customers Pay More as Institutions Seek Ways to Cope With Revenue Squeeze.

Your bank wants more of your money, and it’s found a way to get it: by jacking up the fees on your account.

Customers are paying more to maintain a checking account and withdraw cash from an out-of-system ATM, and when they bounce a check. To make up for declining revenue, many banks are boosting fees and are requiring higher minimum balances for many accounts.

The institutions also have made it easier for customers to spend more than is in their accounts — and then hit them with substantial fees, a practice so vexing to consumer advocates that the Federal Reserve is thinking of regulating it.

Bank revenue has plummeted on the back of foreclosures and rising credit card delinquencies. Now Congress has passed a law cracking down on arbitrary and excessive credit card fees. So the banks have been fighting back.

“There is an economic storm that has made revenue fall,” said Michael Moebs, an economist and chief executive of Moebs Services, an economic research firm in Lake Bluff, Ill. “Fee income is basically where banks and credit unions can offset both loan- and investment-related losses.” Read the rest of this entry »