Canada’s Financial Consumer Agency released a review on October 23 examining how personal-banking fees are structured, disclosed and experienced. The agency found that individual charges can appear modest while their cumulative cost remains difficult for a customer to see, making products harder to compare on the basis of actual use.

The review covered account-maintenance, excess-transaction, ATM, insufficient-funds, overdraft, currency-conversion, cross-border debit, transfer-out and prepaid-product fees. It notes that consumers may not know the full cost of some transactions before completing them and may encounter several charges for a single ATM withdrawal.

Other findings concern product fit and switching. Older account plans may offer less value than newer alternatives, bundled features can complicate comparisons, and transfer-out fees can raise the cost of moving accounts. The agency says personalized, usage-based summaries could give customers a clearer view of what they have paid over time.

The review was requested in Canada’s 2025 budget and is intended to inform policy discussion on transparency, competition and consumer-driven banking. It does not itself change prices or require banks to redesign disclosures. Any binding response would require a separate regulatory, legislative or supervisory step.