credit card regulation
Iberia Bank Removed Overlimit Fees on Credit Cards
Iberia Bank has recently announced that it no longer charges overlimit fees on any of its credit cards. If you have one of Iberia Bank credit cards, you will not need to worry about spending above credit limit and be charged a fee.
| Card Name | Benefits | Requirements | |
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IberiaBank Visa® Platinum Rewards Card |
1.99% BT APR for up to 6 mths; 1 point/$ point rewards | requires Excellent Credit; regular APR: 9.75%; annual fee: none |
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IberiaBank Visa® Gold Cash Back Rewards Card |
1.99% BT APR for up to 6 mths; 1% cash rewards | requires Excellent Credit; regular APR: 9.75%; annual fee: none |
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IberiaBank Visa® Classic |
1.99% BT APR for up to 6 mths | requires Good Credit; regular APR: 8.75%; annual fee: none |
Important Disclaimer: the credit cards information in this post were accurate as of the date of publishing, some or all of the card programs may be discontinued, their terms may be changed after wards.
Credit Card Q&A: What does New Credit Card Rules Mean to You
The fact that Federal Reserve approved new credit card rules means that, before it’s too late, it’s time now to apply for balance transfer credit cards with low interest and low transaction fee.
Federal Reserve released a set of new credit card rules that will take effect starting July 2010. Based on these new rules, credit card companies must:
- Raise interest rates only on new credit cards and future purchases or advances, not on current balances.
- Give you 45 days’ notice before any changes are made to the terms of an account, including slapping on a higher penalty rate for missing payments or paying bills late. Under current rules, companies in most cases give 15 days notice.
- Apply any payment above the minimum to the part of the balance with the highest interest rate.
Credit card companies must not:
- Place unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay.
- Place too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account.
- Unfairly compute balances in a computing tactic known as double-cycle billing.
- Unfairly add security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making it available.
- Make deceptive offers of credit.
- Charge upfront fees for subprime cards (high-interest cards for people with low credit scores, typically with $500 credit limits) that exceed half of the credit-card limit, or require full repayment in less than a year.
The rules were approved by the Federal Reserve, the Treasury Department’s Office of Thrift Supervision and the National Credit Union Administration on Dec. 18th, 2008.
For consumers, these rules will protect those debt-ridden, cash-strapped from being charged sky-high interest rates by credit card companies. They will also prevent consumers to fall in the trap of getting a 0% Balance Transfer card, but actually ended up paying high interest for that balance because credit card companies allocate payment to low interest balance tiers first. Finally, credit card companies will be prevented from taking negative actions such as “universal default” against consumers.
For credit card companies, these rules will definitely shrink the profitable margin of credit card industry, since they eliminate many levers that they could use to bring profit and prevent credit risk: such as raising interests without notice, payment allocation, charging late fees etc.
All in all, while the new rules bring more power to consumer side of the game, the credit card companies may respond by cutting credit card offerings. While consumers may have better than before leverage to get more transparent terms and be treated more in expectation, credit may not be as easy to obtain as before. After all, there will still be more than a year before these rules take effect, which gives people enough time to digest the impact and take action, but one thing is certain: more and more people are taking actions to be more and more financial disciplined.
Important Disclaimer: the credit cards information in this post were accurate as of the date of publishing, some or all of the card programs may be discontinued, their terms may be changed after wards.
