A furious customer yesterday blasted Butterfield Bank for introducing new charges “by stealth”.

The bank, from the start of this year, introduced a new “statement imaging fee” of $2 a month for online personal customers and a fee for “account monitoring” of $8 a month for commercial accounts.

It has also introduced a 25 cent charge per transaction charge for online bill payments.

Butterfield client Jason Benevides said the new charges showed “a lack of customer focus” by Bermuda banks and “sheer disrespect” of its customers by Butterfield.

Mr Benevides, of Paget, added: “The statement imaging fee appears to merely cancel out the savings the bank promised customers by selecting online instead of paper statements.”

In a Letter to the Editor (see page four) he added that a Butterfield call centre representative had told him the statement imaging fee was to cover uploading a PDF statement retrieved online.

Mr Benevides added that he had been told that the changes had been posted in bank branches and were available on its website. But he said that many customers never visited a branch and banked online.

He added: “I’m not sure who frequently visits the bank’s website randomly to search for fees which may be changing in the future.

“However, I would wager that the list of people who do that is quite short.

“It seems that advance notice of new fees was not posted either on the bank’s Butterfield Online electronic banking portal — where a large number of customers would interact with the bank on a regular basis — or as a notice on bank account statements.

“In short, it seems that notices were posted only in the locations least likely for them to be seen by a great many customers. Logic states that one would only take such an approach if trying to avoid a customer’s notice.” A spokesman for the bank said yesterday the statement imaging fee was for making account statements available to customers at Butterfield Online.

He added: “Butterfield confirms that adjustments to our schedule of fees for banking services took effect on January 1, 2016. At that time, the bank introduced statement imaging fees and corporate account monitoring fees. Per applicable protocols, Butterfield placed prominent, advance notices of the changes to the schedule of fees in our banking centres and on our website, butterfieldgroup.com, for the information of our valued customers.”

The spokesman said: “Butterfield continually reviews and adjusts fees for services based on a variety of factors, including changes in customers’ channel usage preferences and associated transaction volumes, as well as changes in the costs of providing services.

“Butterfield is pleased to provide a wide range of secure and convenient financial services to Bermuda residents at prices that are competitive and which provide good value.” But Mr Benevides said: “Nobody likes fee increases, but sometimes they are necessary.

“However, any organisation that truly cares about customer services and transparency would make a serious effort to notify its customers of necessary fee changes and offer some explanation to customers as to why fee increases are necessary or how the customer may be receiving additional value in return.

“It does not appear to me that Butterfield bank has chosen to take that approach.

“That’s not how a company wins business and certainly not how it generates customer goodwill or retains customers.”