As we wait to see what the fallout from the financial-reform legislation will be, there is some good news resulting from new credit card regulations that took effect last year. According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, hair-trigger interest rate increases for minor violations have been eliminated from 100 percent of credit-card issuers, and the fear that the new regs would lead issuers to impose annual fees has proved unfounded. In fact, the percentage of cards charging an annual fee has dropped slightly since last June, from 15 percent to 14 percent.
The bad news: Interest rates continued to rise, as did the fees for cash advances and balance transfers. More than 90 percent of bank cards still impose penalty fees, and what's most troubling is that many issuers have stopped informing their customers what those fees are.
There's one provision yet to take hold - next month, the rule kicks in requiring all credit card issuers to make "any penalty fee or charge" to be "reasonabe and proportional." We'll have to wait and see what kind of effect that has.
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