First and most visible is the service of efficient, convenient clearing of billions of day-to-day transactions, through conveniently located branches, ATMs, telephone call centers, debit card terminals, cheques, money orders, wire transfers, the internet - just about any way people communicate we facilitate the exchange of value. This service is what freed us from the medieval chains of the barter system, enabling efficient local, regional and international exchange of goods and services. Without retail clearing operations our economy would collapse completely and utterly. Yet when you ask the proverbial "(wo)man on the street" how the cheque they used to buy jewelry in Tokyo got back to the envelope their bank statement (or e-statement) arrived in at the end of the month do you think they know ? The answer is no: people generally have no clue how complex and fantastically efficient clearing operations are. We give this service at nominal cost to millions, and they don't even know what we are doing for them ! The time has come to get this message out there... the value proposition is absolutely fabulous: as an industry we desperately need to improve awareness of it.
The second service we deliver through DDA is a secure haven for safekeeping of the earnings and savings of millions of individuals, with complete recordkeeping services and guaranteed fidelity of custody. In no other situation can you warehouse your assets at such nominal cost. Yet this service is not valued highly by most consumers (or businesses or governments). Without secure repositories for cash every individual in our society would be at far more at risk day and night of being robbed or even killed for the money they are now able to safely store in banks. This service is essential to maintaining law, order and property rights of individuals that are fundamental to society…yet no-one even seems to notice we do it.
The third service embedded in the DDA business is, of course, intermediation between depositors and creditors. Demand deposits are the backbone of the funding base for credit cards, lines of credit and similar loans that are essential to modern living for the vast majority of consumers. Without consumer credit the availability of goods and services to most consumers would be severely reduced. The consumer-driven economy we live in simply could not function.
Despite the extraordinary – in fact unique - value that the retail banking industry delivers every day to every participant in the economy bankers are under siege for the pricing of DDA services today. Consumer resentment over fees for processing NSF cheques and the potential elimination of free checking in the US has become the stuff of politics. In reality the retail banking industry has been undervaluing these essential services for decades, and any of the three value propositions outlined above should easily justify charges sufficient to make these services profitable to banks. The time has come to embrace public enquiry, present the real business case for DDA services to consumers and charge what they are worth.
-DBM
