STRATEGIC PARTNERS
February 2, 2003
NEW YORK -- In an effort to attract new customers in the highly competitive New York metropolitan market, Seattle-based Washington Mutual (WaMu) will drop the $1.50 convenience fee it currently collects at about 300 ATMs in New York and New Jersey.
According to a report in the Bergen (N.J.) Record, WaMu aims to drop the fee charged to non-customers, perhaps by the end of the year, as it has throughout most of its service areas.
"People appreciate that," said company spokesman Derek Aney. "We've been doing it for years."
WaMu, the nation's largest thrift with 1,500 branches in 13 states, bought Dime Bancorp and its 123 branches in New York and New Jersey last year for $5.2 billion. The ATMs were included in the deal.
Ever since, it's been advertising its free checking accounts, home loans and other financial products and services on billboards and on television in a region where competition for deposits, especially in Manhattan, has intensified.
WaMu has so far opened more than 20 new-style branches, called Occasio, which feature casually-dressed tellers working behind freestanding "teller towers" instead of the long counters found at most banks.
The elimination of convenience fees will not come for some months because WaMu wants to expand its branch and ATM network to handle the additional traffic from non-customers, Aney said.
According to the Record, WaMu plans to open 250 new branches around the country, including 30 to 40 in New York and New Jersey.
The company reported recently that deposit and consumer banking fees rose 27 percent in 2002's fourth quarter to $449 million.
Not charging non-customers for ATM withdrawals is a rarity. ATM fees accounted for 17 percent of total fee income for U.S. banks, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. And U.S. banks collected $2.3 billion in ATM fees in 2002, according to a Celent Communicationsreport.
