Fed sets 2019 priced services fee schedules, introduces new services

New fee schedules that took effect Jan. 2 for the Federal Reserve Banks’ priced services and electronic access for financial institutions include fee increases as well as some new services for 2019, according to a notice for the Federal Register.

The Fed Board-approved fee changes are to recover the Reserve Banks’ direct and indirect costs of providing the services, plus imputed costs and profit (collectively referred to as the board-set private sector adjustment factor, or PSAF).

There are no price changes for existing priced FedACH services and National Settlement Service (NSS) products, according to the Federal Reserve Board’s notice, scheduled to publish in the Register Friday. However, the Reserve Banks will offer a new ACH Exception Resolution Service that will provide an automated means for customers to resolve ACH exceptions. The fee structure will contain fixed and variable elements.

According to the notice, the Reserve Banks’ check services fees are changing as follows:

  • Per-item fees for the FedForward Premium Daily Fee A, B, and C deposit options are increasing $0.001 for Tier 3 and $0.003 for Tier 4. The Premium Daily Fee C daily fixed fee is rising $200, from $3,500 to $3,700.
  • Cash letter fees are rising $0.50 for all deadlines on FedForward Standard, Deferred, Dollar-Culled, and Endpoint-Culled image cash letters and FedReturn Standard image cash letters.
  • The per-item fee for the FedReceipt Premium Delivery 8:00 a.m. EST target is rising $0.006; per item fees for the Premium Delivery 10:00 a.m. target and Premium Delivery 12:00 noon target are up $0.002.
  • FedReceipt Electronic Reject Repair fees are up $0.05, the Basic repair fee is rising from $0.15 per- item to $0.20 per-item, and Premium repair fee is up from $0.25 per-item to $0.30 per-item.
  • All fees for the FedImage product and certain truncation fees are rising 10% (rounded to the nearest increment based upon the number of decimal places of the current fee).
  • The Reserve Banks will introduce two new fees intended to improve the quality of check deposit processing and reduce errors in adjustment case submissions: a $0.50 fee for encoding error and duplicate-payment adjustment cases caused by the depositary bank’s incorrect encoding or duplicate deposit of an item; and a $2.50 fee for automated adjustment case types that require manual intervention by Reserve Bank staff due to error on the part of the adjusting bank.

For Fedwire Funds, the offline send surcharge and offline receive surcharge are each rising from $60 to $65. For Fedwire Securities, the agency online transfer fee is rising from $0.77 to $0.98, and the automated claims adjustment process (ACAP) fee is rising from $0.80 to $1.00.

For FedLine AccessSolutions, the banks will stop offering new FedMail Fax subscriptions and will discontinue offering the Accounting Totals by Service (ACTS) report.

FedLine Command server certificates will now be provided as part of FedLine Command packages at no additional cost, the Fed notice says. Also, upgraded FedLine Direct Plus and Premier packages will be offered to reflect the incorporation of the Check 21 Large File Delivery service with the FedLine Direct solution. (The Fed says existing customers may continue to use the legacy FedLine Direct Plus and Premier packages until they migrate to the upgraded packages.) Additionally, the Reserve Banks will increase the monthly à la carte fee for Network Diversity by $500, from $2,000 to $2,500.

Federal Reserve Bank Services