FORMER Prime Minister Bruce Golding says banks have become unfriendly to customers and is asking if they are aware of how inhospitable they have become.

Golding, who served as Jamaica’s eighth prime minister from September 2007 to October 2011, made the comments in a letter to the editor in which he shared an experience he had with a bank with which he holds an account.

The former prime minister said he had written a cheque for $32,000 on his account payable to a man who had done some work for him.

However, the man returned the following day to say that the bank told him they no longer cash personal cheques and that he would have to lodge it to his account and wait a few days for it to be cleared.

“He does not have a bank account. I had to drive to an ATM to withdraw cash to pay him — a waste of both his time and mine,” Golding related.

“Why have commercial banks become so user unfriendly? And do they understand the inconvenience that their unfriendliness is causing?” the former head of government asked.

His letter comes just a few weeks after Member of Parliament for St Catherine Southern Fitz Jackson initiated legal action against Scotiabank over a service charge he had to pay for the encashment of a cheque in 2019.

Jackson submitted a claim to the Commercial Division of the Supreme Court on Tuesday, July 19, arguing that the bank breached its fiduciary responsibility as a licensed and regulated financial institution to honour a negotiable instrument, as per the Bills of Exchange Act.

According to Jackson, the bank was charging him a fee of $385 to encash a cheque valued $2,500.

If the court rules in his favour it would set a legal precedent preventing banks from charging fees to encash cheques, according to Anthony Williams, one of Jackson’s attorneys.

Since 2013 Jackson has been waging an almost one-man crusade against exorbitant and illegitimate banking fees, bringing the matter to Parliament through a private members motion that highlighted several charges imposed by deposit-taking institutions, particularly commercial banks. At that time the motion requested a study on fees in Jamaica, the Caribbean, and other international jurisdictions.