Lloyds TSB Increase Credit Card Rates And Charges

June 22, 2006

By Peter Kenny

Lloyds TSB, the UK's fifth biggest bank, has increased the interest rate on its popular Platinum credit card as well as its Rewards American Express® card today by 1 per cent.

The standard APR for both credit cards has been increased to 15.9%.

Lloyds have also increased the balance transfer fee for both cards by 0.5% bringing the fee now due for any balance transfers to 2.5%. This fee is uncapped as before.

Just this week Lloyds TSB warned of mounting debt amongst its customers. Lloyds did say that bad debts were growing at a slower rate than last year when debts hit £905 million.

Lloyds TSB finance director, Helen Weir said, “We expect our second-half impairment charge within the retail business to be no greater than the first half,"

"If that trend were to continue, then we would expect to see more of the very strong trading performance feeding through to the bottom line,"

Earlier this month, Lloyds TSB was forced by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to reduce its credit card default charges to £12 per item. The OFT decided that banks and credit card companies were applying excessive charges to consumers who made a late repayment, had a cheque bounce or had their account go into an unauthorised overdraft.

Click here for more details on the Lloyds Platinum Credit Card