Cashing in on your money

Stuart Bernau admits the Swindon-based building society is obsessed by the issue of fee-charging cashpoints, but says that's nothing to be ashamed of.

Today Mr Bernau, the money giant's treasury and commercial director, was due to take the crusade to the Government.

He was set to be quizzed for about 20 minutes by a treasury select committee on cashpoints, and said his aim was to explode some myths about the alleged need to charge customers to withdraw their own money.

At the moment there are 21,000 fee-charging automatic telling machines (ATMs) out of 54,000.

Nationwide itself has 2,330 machines, and despite not charging, the network makes a profit.

Mr Bernau said: "Broadly speaking, we are against the charges and want more transparency. We believe it's a real matter of public interest.

"We believe the industry should act as transparently as possible. There are rules being put in place about transparency because we and the media have campaigned.

"It's a myth that the industry would have brought in transparency Nationwide has received a great deal of criticism from other banks over the period of the campaign."

The groundswell of opinion against charging cashpoints started in 2000 when Barclays said it was planning to charge account holders from other banks to use its ATMs. Nationwide threatened to sue if that became reality.

Mr Bernau said the next misconception he wanted to tackle was that charging machines are only introduced where a cashpoint is new.

"They are in service stations, shopping malls, small shops, and places you would expect, but some of the banks have sold their sites to charging operators.

"Nobody would have objections if they were all in rural locations that would not otherwise have a cashpoint.

"But the charging operators are writing to the site owners, and offering more money if they install their machines. We know this because it's happened to us."

Another point to be tackled is the claim that charging machines only account for five per cent of withdrawals. This alone incurs £140 million a year in charges to account holders, but Mr Bernau pointed to America where more than 40 per cent of all cashpoints charge.

If that 40 per cent figure were replicated in the UK, the charging cashpoint market would be creaming off closer to £1 billion a year.

Nationwide says it does not object to charging machines if they are in areas which have to charge to make them viable.

Mr Bernau said he accepted the fees as a part of the open market, but urged people to use a free machine where possible.

Nationwide has also called for a code of practice that would see machines clearly marked as charging, rather than being advertised as offering free services which often only include a free balance inquiry rather than withdrawal.

Mr Bernau said: "Funda-mentally it's a question of public interest.

"We believe it's worth fighting for because if it's not, charging machines could become a fact of life within just a few years."

Providing choice

CASH machine firms launched a vigorous defence of their policy of charging to withdraw money when they were hauled in front of the treasury select committee.

The firms, under fire for charging up to £1.75 a transaction, told MPs their growth was thanks to providing choice for consumers who, for whatever reason, decide not to seek out a free machine.

Mark Mills, boss of Cardpoint, said: "Our businesses aren't doing anything wrong. They are offering a service that is paid for and based on consumer choice.

"Everyone would like everything for free but the world isn't like that.

Where our services charge, customers are happy to pay for it rather than not have the service at all."

Other companies include Bank Machine, TRM and Moneybox.

Ron Delnevo, managing director of Bank Machine said: "This is a low-margin business it isn't a high-margin business."

Mr Delnevo said his company declared pre-tax profits of £175,000 in 2003 when it had around 800 machines.

"We are not exploitative and we do not make super-profits," he said.

Tom Morton