Duncan Douglass Quoted about Annual Fees in American Banker
In The Press
August 14, 2009
Duncan Douglass was quoted in an American Banker article discussing Citigroup Inc.’s decision to add annual fees to preexisting credit card accounts. Experts expect more issuers to follow, making such changes before the Credit CARD Act’s February date for full compliance.
According to Douglass, the act "does not generally prohibit card issuers from imposing new annual fees on existing credit card accounts after the Act's February 22, 2010, general effective date (or at any other time), [but] . . . annual fees that apply to one or more subsets of the issuer's credit card accounts may carry greater risk of being covered by the outstanding balance limitations, particularly if the affected accounts are those carrying outstanding balances."
To reiterate the point, he said there was not "too great a barrier to an issuer's implementation of annual fees after February 22, 2010," but, "that being said, there's less legal risk to doing it now than after February 22."