One of the utellus team received a letter from Citibank yesterday.  He has a current account with them which, he was told, from 31st January 2007 became a Citibank Plus account.  If he does nothing then from 1 April he will be charged a monthly fee of £10 for the account, even if he does not take advantage of any of the benefits associated with it.  If he wants to continue with free banking, then he has to take action to be moved back to a Citibank Access account.

Citibank is not the first bank to offer a fee-paying current account with additional benefits.  We are not impressed, however, that customers currently enjoying free banking are to be transferred automatically to a fee-paying account and then have to act to opt out.

Back in November we suggested that other banks would watch First Direct’s current account charges with interest, and that more would follow suit.  It seems that we were right - be aware.