Bank mistake almost costs Absa client R300,000
A once-off credit life policy premium was erroneously debited every month
If you have a loan from the bank and credit life insurance on that loan, keep an eye on deductions for insurance. Banks make mistakes that can cost you a fortune. In the case of a consumer in George in the Western Cape, his bank’s mistake cost him more than R220,000 in erroneous credit life premiums and about R86,000 in overcharged interest. The consumer, who does not want to be named, had a personal loan from Absa when he went into debt counselling in 2009. In 2015, his debt counsellor Philip Nortje suspected something was amiss when he noticed a very large outstanding balance on the account. Nortje asked the bank for a statement of account and it was then that Absa discovered it had overcharged the consumer interest. It duly reimbursed him R86,216. “A month after reversing the interest, the bank started debiting the client a credit life premium of R8,484 a month,” Nortje says. “I phoned and e-mailed Absa countless times trying to get someone to make sense of the situation, and at ...
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