01.RBA adjusts penalty fees
The RBA made an eye-opening adjustment to its assessment of banking fees in its most recent bulletin. After reporting in June 2010 that deposit account penalty fees had dropped from $516 million in 2008 to $476 million in 2009, the reserve bank issued a correction. Fees actually dropped from $701 million to $688 million over that period. The "adjustments to the historical data" were necessary, in part, because banks counted exception fees as loans. The good news is that the 2010 figure is $293 million - for now.