NEW YORK — Free checking as we know it is ending.
The days when you could walk into a bank branch and open an account with no charges and no strings attached appear to be over. Now, you have to jump through some hoops — keep a high balance, use direct deposit or swipe your debit card several times a month.
One new account at Bank of America charges $8.95 a month if you want to bank with a teller or get a paper statement.
Almost all of the largest U.S. banks are either already making free checking much more difficult to get or expected to do so soon, with fees on even basic banking services.
It’s happening because a raft of new laws enacted in the past year, including the financial- overhaul package, have led to an acute shrinking of revenue for the banks. So they are scraping together money however they can.
Bank of America, which does business with half the households in the U.S., announced a drastic shift Tuesday in how it does business with customers. One key change: Free checking, a mainstay of U.S. banking in recent years, will be nearly unheard of.
“I’ve seen more regulation in the last 30 months than in the last 30 years,” said Robert Hammer, chief executive of RK Hammer, a bank-advisory firm. “The bottom line for banks is shifting enormously, swiftly and deeply, and they’re not going to sit by twiddling their thumbs. They’re going to change.”
In the past year, federal lawmakers have passed a range of laws aimed at protecting bank customers from harsh fees, such as the $35 charged to some Bank of America customers who overdrew their accounts by buying something small such as a latte.
These and other fees were lucrative. According to financial-services firm Sandler O’Neill, they made up 12 percent of Bank of America’s revenue.
On Tuesday, the bank took a $10.4 billion charge to its third-quarter earnings because the new regulations limit fees the bank can collect when retailers accept debit cards.
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan acknowledged in a conference call that overdraft fees were generating a lot of income. But the bank was also losing customers who were often taken aback by the high hidden fees.
