You won’t believe how badly your bank is fleecing you
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Summary
Canadians think good things about their banks, but the truth is, they are also ripping us off quite badly. When it comes to bank fees, Canadians pay among the highest fees in the world. Author Andrew Spence, who has worked in the banking industry, takes a look at it.
Transcript
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They provide your pension because they're in all of our pension plans.
00:02:11.340
And generally speaking, Canadians think good things about their banks.
00:02:15.460
But the truth is, they're also ripping us off quite badly.
00:02:23.080
And today we're going to look at an issue that started to bubble up on the political side.
00:02:30.520
Might shock some of you, though, to find out that the Conservative Party is the one that lately has been taking an aim at banking fees.
00:02:38.120
Several MPs have raised the issue that, quite frankly, we are being ripped off by our banks.
00:02:47.220
The federal government committed to lowering bank fees for Canadians.
00:02:51.620
Compared to the U.S., Canada has 34 domestic banks versus the roughly 4,844 domestic American banks.
00:03:00.760
When it comes to bank fees, Canadians pay among the highest bank fees in the world.
00:03:08.680
Andrew Spence is someone who's worked in the banking industry.
00:03:12.140
He's worked for various governments, provincial, federal, internationally over the years.
00:03:17.680
And he took a look at the banking system and joins us now to talk about it because Canadians pay some of the highest fees in the world.
00:03:26.460
And, Andrew, I'm not exaggerating when I say, flipping through your book, I'd get furious and I'd put it away.
00:03:34.160
And then I'd pick it up again and I'd get furious.
00:03:47.000
So, McKinsey, the big global management consultancy firm.
00:03:52.540
I walk my dog past their office here in Toronto every day.
00:03:56.660
Wrote an article earlier this year about, is it springtime in Canada's fintech industry?
00:04:09.960
But in that article, they pointed out that Canada's banks have revenues about 8% of GDP.
00:04:19.600
And the average for the closest countries to ours, in terms of the structure of the banking system, the UK, Australia, and the US, their average is about 6%.
00:04:28.240
And if you go to Europe, where the fintech revolution is in full swing, their take of revenues relative to GDP is just 4.5%.
00:04:41.420
That is the case, because those countries take competition policy seriously, and they take consumer protection seriously.
00:04:51.740
Whereas in Canada, we either don't take competition policy seriously, and I'm pretty sure we don't, or we don't execute on elements of consumer protection.
00:05:04.200
So the banks are able to take what they want, because the competition is just not there.
00:05:12.160
And that's a function as much as government economic policy and an attitude towards competition that until recently was non-existent.
00:05:26.700
And then I say, well, but wait, I thought our banks were highly tech-savvy.
00:05:32.960
Our rollout of the Interact system, our debit card system, far advanced in the United States.
00:05:39.200
For years, I've been traveling to the United States with more cash than I would ever carry with me here, because it's not as prevalent.
00:05:46.460
Now, that gap has definitely closed over the last while, but doesn't that prove that our fintech is superior?
00:05:56.700
So I walked past my bank just the other day, and I glanced through the window, and I noticed that the difference between what they'll sell me, a U.S. dollar, and what they'll buy it from me, is seven cents.
00:06:15.760
So if I was going to go on a trip to the U.S., I'd go into the bank, and I'd say, I want to buy a thousand dollars U.S., because if the U.S. system is not very good, I won't be able to take my money out, machine, I just need to have that cash.
00:06:25.860
And they'll say, sure, Mr. Spence, give me $1,470.
00:06:34.500
But then I realized, oh, the trick's been canceled, so I don't need these dollars anymore.
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So I'd give them back to the teller, and I'd say, can I have my money back, please?
00:06:48.000
So I would pay 70 bucks just for that momentary transaction in person, in a branch, with a person.
00:06:55.920
Now, if I banked with a European bank, I'd have what's called an open banking app in my hand.
00:07:03.060
My smartphone, I'd say, oh, I want to buy a thousand U.S. dollars, please.
00:07:06.740
You put that in there, they would fine you the lowest cost provider of those funds, you'd hit the button, buy, that money would be instantaneously in your bank account.
00:07:21.940
Now, without having to open a U.S. dollar account, which is what we would have to do here, with a fee, of course.
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Yeah, so let's go through the transaction, right?
00:07:33.100
So let's say there are a number of fintechs here in Canada that will offer you foreign exchange services at mid-market, right?
00:07:39.180
Halfway between what the bank buys or sells for.
00:07:42.080
But I've got to have a Canadian dollar account.
00:07:47.140
I've got to send the Canadian dollars to the fintech provider that converts it to U.S. dollars,
00:07:52.580
and then he or she has to send that money back to my U.S. dollar account.
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And I save myself $0.35, but it might take two days, three days potentially.
00:08:02.460
And then I've got to pay the Interact charge of $3, $1.50 each way,
00:08:07.660
even though the cost of the bank is $0.12 for that entire transaction.
00:08:16.500
So the bulk fees for banks to transact through Interact are $0.06 a transaction.
00:08:22.140
But for you and me, Brian, to do that transaction, we're paying $1.50.
00:08:27.240
So that's a huge margin over the cost of facilitating the payment.
00:08:33.280
But anyway, we'll come back to that in a minute.
00:08:34.920
Because the key part about why you don't bother with this fintech setup as it is,
00:08:39.720
is because I've got to pay a fee on my U.S. dollar account that I'm holding there
00:08:43.420
for the sole purpose of receiving a U.S. dollar payment from a fintech provider
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so I can save some money on the cost of transaction.
00:08:51.300
When I add it all up, I'm probably paying more by getting set up to do that
00:08:56.460
because I don't make many foreign exchange transactions per year.
00:09:00.800
All this by way of saying that these frictions are put in place
00:09:05.400
by the fact that our payment system is archaic now compared to what you can get
00:09:13.920
in Europe and even in the United States where their take up of digital banking
00:09:22.700
The answer every time that someone raises an issue, though,
00:09:27.060
is something that I mentioned in the introduction, and that is stability.
00:09:35.940
This is why we can't allow foreign competition, is because of the stable banking system.
00:09:42.280
So is that a small price to pay or a very large price to pay for a stable banking system?
00:09:48.460
Canada's banking system is stable, certainly because Canadian banks are conservative
00:09:53.740
relative to banking in other parts of the world.
00:09:57.020
But they're also stable, and they also had a better financial crisis in 2008-2009
00:10:03.780
because they are more closely and carefully regulated by Opsi.
00:10:10.220
One of the reasons that both back then, well, especially the United States,
00:10:15.280
got into so much trouble is because not only did they liberalize their system,
00:10:23.480
they also dropped the ball on regulatory oversight by various regulators.
00:10:31.220
So in Canada, we had a clear cap on how much leverage banks could pursue.
00:10:36.180
We had significantly higher capital standards than the Basel II Accords,
00:10:45.000
which was a sort of a globally agreed-upon capital minimum.
00:10:49.040
And so, and we also, because the banks have this oligopolistic grip on their customers,
00:10:59.320
and because they are allowed to assign fees to many, many different dimensions of transactions
00:11:04.920
that go through the system at ever higher prices,
00:11:08.180
they did not have to reach out along the risk curve
00:11:12.000
to try and satisfy high expectations of returns.
00:11:16.860
And so we avoided the ugly politics of bailouts, for sure, because our banks didn't go under.
00:11:23.020
But I don't think people realize that Canadian banks had a significant amount of help from our authorities,
00:11:29.200
especially from the Bank of Canada Finance Department,
00:11:32.760
that provided a significant amount of liquidity to help tide them over.
00:11:38.140
Yes. Well, we didn't do quantitative easing so much in Canada,
00:11:41.860
but we do have emergency liquidity funds available in times of crisis.
00:11:47.040
And those funds were heavily drawn upon by the banking system,
00:11:51.140
and appropriately so, because that's what it's there for.
00:11:55.100
But the Finance Department also bought a large number of illiquid mortgages from the banks
00:12:00.420
that reliquified them at a time when they needed it the most.
00:12:04.900
So let's not be in any doubt that the banks were able to sell through
00:12:18.340
There was a significant amount of assistance from the state that helped us.
00:12:30.060
And I would say that stabilizing intervention is always profitable, right?
00:12:40.460
because we as consumers and taxpayers give the banks help every day.
00:12:48.260
You've been up going through some of the daily transactions that we do.
00:12:56.260
But a lot of small transactions add up to a lot of money.
00:13:01.820
Give me a few examples and compare it, as you do in the book,
00:13:09.500
Because I think that's insightful for people who will.
00:13:18.880
Oh, no, we couldn't possibly do like the Americans do.
00:13:22.260
But, hey, let me get down to the United States as quick as I can for a holiday.
00:13:27.720
So the Brits and the Australians have similar banking systems to us,
00:13:38.420
or Royal Bank of Scotland, or any of the, you know.
00:13:52.640
Canadians, many Canadians still use paper checks
00:13:59.120
And so every now and again, for whatever reason,
00:14:03.960
You don't have enough in your account to cover the check that you've written.
00:14:15.760
If you were to find yourself on the wrong side of that transaction
00:14:19.340
in the UK of Australia, come anywhere from $2 to $5, maybe nothing.
00:14:39.700
And thankfully, I haven't bounced a check in quite a while
00:14:46.800
and I walked past a bank machine in Picadilly Soka Station in London.
00:14:52.160
And above it, broadly advertised, was free withdrawals.
00:14:58.440
So if I go and take money out of another bank's bank machine here,
00:15:07.720
Whereas in the UK, you won't pay anything for that.
00:15:10.460
So, and overall fees for a fee for a checking account can be minimal to zero in those countries.
00:15:21.280
After my book was published, I had an op-ed in the Globe and Mail
00:15:28.300
And on my LinkedIn account, I received a message from a member of the public
00:15:33.400
that thanked me for outlining just how egregiously high these fees were
00:15:42.660
And he told me a sort of almost distressing story about how he had to take over his father's financial affairs
00:15:51.680
because his father was going really too old to manage them.
00:15:55.400
And he outlined $2,500 worth of charges that his bank had hit him with because he was bouncing checks.
00:16:10.640
Every time he went into overdraft, he got hit with a fee.
00:16:13.860
Then he got hit with overdraft interest charges.
00:16:16.480
Plus the fees on the bank of some account, rather, of some $15 to $20 at a time.
00:16:25.760
Now, in 2019, the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK banned their banks from charging any of these fees
00:16:40.000
Moreover, they gave the banks a mandate, or no, not a mandate, a requirement, a duty of care.
00:16:48.720
Because if you can write an algorithm that can assign a charge every time someone's account is deteriorating,
00:16:54.020
then you can have a signal that perhaps you should look at the details of why that cat
00:16:58.700
or that person's financial affairs are deteriorating.
00:17:01.880
And you need to go and find out why and see if you can help them.
00:17:13.980
At the beginning, you were going through the—you put in very detailed terms.
00:17:26.340
And you mentioned free withdrawals earlier, but I just wanted to pull it up.
00:17:31.600
You point out that most people don't know this.
00:17:33.880
The Interact system is jointly owned by all the banks.
00:17:38.760
And they all make a profit off of it with these six-cent transactions that they'll charge us $1.50 for,
00:17:46.980
But you point out the cash withdrawal, that if it's $1.50 on a $1,000 transaction, that's 0.15%.
00:17:58.440
But you go down to a withdrawal fee of 3%, or sorry, 7.5% if you're going at $20.
00:18:06.540
So a young person going out to spend, you know, some spending money, they're paying 7.5% to get $20.
00:18:19.500
I mean, that was one of the ones that really pissed me off.
00:18:24.620
I mean, the whole payment system needs some examination.
00:18:30.520
Now, the anecdote I was giving, or not so much an anecdote, I was illustrating the difference
00:18:34.880
between having an open banking app on your phone where you could do your foreign exchange
00:18:40.500
transaction in the blink of an eye at the lowest possible cost.
00:18:43.780
And that requires an enhancement to our payment system here in Canada.
00:18:50.100
And for some time, there's been a proposal to introduce an instantaneous settlement system
00:19:04.340
Now, the Canadian payment system has been a thorn in the side of the federal government
00:19:15.560
And there have been various attempts to loosen the bank's grip over that payment system, because
00:19:22.580
they use it as a sort of a castle wall and a moat to keep competition at bay.
00:19:29.800
But every time the federal government attempts to open that up to more competition, somehow
00:19:39.840
the banks reassert that control and dominance over it.
00:19:43.280
So, the Canadian payment, the CBA used to manage the payment system, then it became the Canadian
00:19:50.440
Payments Association, then that was rebranded a few years ago to Payments Canada, when they
00:19:56.300
were going to take responsibility for delivering real-time rail.
00:20:00.280
And then they decided, well, we'll outsource that to Interac.
00:20:12.180
And so, anyway, real-time rail was supposed to have arrived, or the tracks to real-time
00:20:18.920
rail, as it were, should have been laid down by last year.
00:20:22.340
And now, nobody seems to know when it's coming.
00:20:26.420
And it's not, you know, hyperbole to say, we don't know when it's coming at all.
00:20:33.040
So, if we don't have instantaneous settlement, we don't have access to open banking.
00:20:38.780
If we don't have access to open banking, we remain in the bottom five of 70 countries globally
00:20:47.100
that's not making its mark in digital banking, which is pathetic, because we have one of the
00:20:55.600
highest rates of smartphone penetration in the world, and we are a highly digitally literate
00:21:02.540
But we can't get there, because we can't access it.
00:21:07.140
So, going in this direction, the real-time rail, that would lower costs for merchants who
00:21:13.500
are always talking about the high fees the banks put on them.
00:21:20.200
What's standing in the way of us adopting this?
00:21:25.000
At one point, PayPal was a disruptor for the banking system.
00:21:29.040
I don't see as much use of that, although I was offered PayPal as an option to book a
00:21:36.100
You know, are there tech disruptors out there that could push this along?
00:21:42.400
Canada has already quite a well-developed fintech industry, but it's stalled.
00:21:51.140
NEO, for example, the bank headquartered in Calgary, became the payments provider for Tim
00:22:03.020
So, we are making some penetration, but the key point is that we still have to go through
00:22:07.360
the payments calendar, which is run by the banks, run for the banks, and there's only
00:22:14.300
so much we can achieve without this instantaneous settlement system.
00:22:20.400
So, we're not getting the full benefit of the infrastructure that we've already been put in
00:22:27.680
place, because it's just sitting there on the periphery, and we're unable to leverage it to
00:22:35.020
So, imagine, you know, that there's about 2% of GDP that's being funneled to bank shareholders
00:22:39.700
that could be distributed to customers and a new nascent industry to create opportunity
00:22:51.300
So, I mean, the costs are more than just the cost to you and I as consumers.
00:22:55.060
There are real negative network effects, as it were, for the economy as a whole, because
00:23:03.980
And whether that's a combination of institutional obstructionism and bureaucratic inertia, I'm not
00:23:12.700
really sure, but I am more than convinced that both of those issues is restraining our development.
00:23:21.020
We need to take a quick break, Andrew, but when we come back, I want to talk about opening
00:23:24.660
up the banking system, busting it open with competition.
00:23:30.420
Canada's banking system costs as a fortune, as you've been hearing, and if you're like
00:23:49.720
me, you've just been getting angry or listening to Andrew talk.
00:23:52.300
No offense, Andrew, but you're bringing us great information.
00:24:00.440
Canadians don't like to like our airlines because we only have a couple of them.
00:24:04.640
We don't like to like our cell phone providers because we only have a couple.
00:24:10.300
It seems in banking that it's much more wide open because we have big six banks.
00:24:15.760
We also have credit unions, which once upon a time charged lower fees.
00:24:20.300
Now they charge the same as the banks, you know, last time I looked, they're nicer banks
00:24:33.120
Because I'll tell you, I'm headed down to Florida to see my folks and they bank with Royal
00:24:42.540
They're allowed to go down and buy American banks and TD, they own the Eastern U.S.
00:24:47.640
Bank of Montreal just bought up a huge chunk of the California banking system while already
00:25:00.160
Should we allow foreign banks, be it Barclays, be it Bank of America, to come into this country?
00:25:16.020
My sense is, and having spoken to federal policymakers over the years, there's always been the concern
00:25:24.700
that if you allow a U.S. bank of any heft that has the same capability as a Canadian bank,
00:25:35.060
you're possibly and most likely looking at one of the big four money center banks, right?
00:25:39.620
That would be Bank of America, Wells Fargo, City Bank, J.P. Borgen.
00:25:45.500
And if you look at their balance sheet and their income statement, they look an awful like
00:25:51.760
They have, they're large, they're much bigger than the Canadian banks, obviously.
00:25:56.140
They're large, they have a degree of market power that equals that of the Canadian banks
00:26:04.440
And so it's not clear that if they were to come up here, they would do anything different
00:26:09.240
than the Canadian banks, because that's what they're doing at home.
00:26:14.120
There are about another hundred banks in the U.S. that are small regional banks that don't
00:26:18.660
have that market power, that do fund entrepreneurs and small businesses, and occasionally one or
00:26:25.980
But the U.S. authorities are willing to accept that as a price for there at least to be some
00:26:31.380
financing for local economies to entrepreneurs, because those businesses don't have the same
00:26:38.140
So the other issue you have with a market like Canada, which economists say is not contestable,
00:26:45.620
you can come up here and have a contest with them and hope to win, those banks would have
00:26:51.160
to come here, face high costs on the way in, would likely have to hire staff from the local
00:26:59.080
bank, just because there are always differences between markets, they would be subject to what
00:27:04.460
we call adverse selection, which is, you know, who would be my new borrower as well, the people
00:27:08.460
that the Canadian banks won't lend any money to, and they don't lend them any money for
00:27:14.100
So at the end of the day, this has never really been seen as a solution for this problem
00:27:19.440
However, the reason I put the fintechs on the table very early on is because now we do have
00:27:27.680
a way to introduce competition to the banking system by what we call unbundling the bank,
00:27:34.860
by allowing individual and small providers to come in and offer many of the different services
00:27:42.260
that the banks offer at a competitive price, even though they don't have to build an entire
00:27:50.160
And this is the reason why the banks want to slow warp the arrival of fintechs, and you
00:27:58.420
So that is digital technology, digital banking that will finally crack open this incontestability
00:28:08.900
We've seen some attempts at that before with Tangerine, I forget what it used to be called,
00:28:17.500
That was a much lower-tech attempt at doing a similar thing.
00:28:22.680
Changed to Tangerine, got bought up by Scotiabank, and now it's just Scotiabank's low-cost option.
00:28:28.840
You had PC Financial, which has had some success.
00:28:36.240
Is it just the new technology that's coming on board that makes it easier to do this unbundling?
00:28:47.540
Because you spend a good time in the book talking about how in the United States, in Britain and
00:29:00.040
The smaller regional banks will lend to small businesses in the U.S.
00:29:04.360
And small businesses here have an incredibly tough time getting loans.
00:29:10.400
That's why people take out a line of credit on their home or families pool together money
00:29:17.720
Because if you go to Royal Bank, if you go to Scotiabank, if you go to BMO, they're going to laugh at you.
00:29:29.380
Our banks are not in the business of risk, right?
00:29:34.360
So, if you want to borrow money from a bank, you've got to show a good base of collateral, right?
00:29:42.500
You have to show that if you don't honor your obligations, there's some security for them to seize.
00:29:47.800
Now, banks have to be very careful about credit because they invest over very long periods of time.
00:30:02.340
And so, that does make them very sensitive to loss.
00:30:04.720
And we shouldn't bash the banks too heavily because we need them to avoid that kind of risk.
00:30:15.440
So, you know, we have to respect that to a degree.
00:30:21.340
But when you look at the spread between a small business loan and a large business loan,
00:30:28.060
there's over 2, 2.5%, whereas elsewhere in the world, it's only about 0.5%.
00:30:33.160
So, other countries are willing to put the resources into looking at the risk
00:30:39.180
and adequately pricing the risk and distributing more credit.
00:30:50.600
And there's no agency saying that this is the problem.
00:30:54.260
Now, we do have two government agencies that have grown out of this problem, right?
00:30:58.780
We have the Business Development Corporation, and we have the Export Development Corporation,
00:31:06.860
But I don't know the BDC as well as I should, for full disclosure.
00:31:12.480
But one has to think that, you know, all of a sudden,
00:31:16.300
if a government agency is granting credit and underwriting risk,
00:31:20.100
then you've got to think, what's the risk that they're worried about?
00:31:23.320
Is it they're worried about the risk of loss or are they worried about reputational risk
00:31:27.680
that comes from lending money and then losing money?
00:31:30.080
Because politically, there will be a price to pay for that if it got too big.
00:31:35.360
And there is no clear way to take this forward without some sort of reform.
00:31:40.600
I've just looked up the Bank of Canada's prime rate, 5.95% right now.
00:31:49.700
So, that means that for someone who is in a small business,
00:31:54.420
they're more likely looking at just below 8.5% for a loan.
00:32:01.400
Well, when inflation is falling back to 2%, yeah.
00:32:05.980
So, the Conservatives have taken up this issue of banking fees being too high,
00:32:12.600
but they are instinctively not big fans of going in for regulations.
00:32:24.120
but adding on new regulations is not generally their forte.
00:32:31.720
I think back to when Jim Flaherty was finance minister
00:32:36.020
and there was a demand that we needed more low-priced daily banking options.
00:32:43.100
okay, you as an industry have to come up with solutions that meet this,
00:32:50.620
And all of a sudden, the bank suddenly had all these programs for students and seniors,
00:32:58.240
do all of these things that used to cost you a very high fee.
00:33:00.980
Is there something that, given that where the polls are at
00:33:14.380
I would, first of all, start where the UK did with open banking,
00:33:19.700
which is bring all the banks into a room and say,
00:33:21.940
okay, folks, we are going to launch open banking in 18 months,
00:33:26.420
and you're going to do it whether you like it or not,
00:33:33.680
You can go over there and talk to the FinTech guys,
00:33:36.520
and I'm going to assign an implementation trustee that will get this done on date X
00:33:43.940
according to the principles that that trustee decides upon
00:33:48.020
once you've all had an opportunity to air your positions.
00:33:52.440
And what would that do for the average consumer?
00:33:59.160
In the UK, there are 151 potential suppliers of financial products
00:34:06.020
that anybody who has the open banking app on their phone can take advantage of,
00:34:12.220
and that will bring a degree of price competition at a furious and fast pace
00:34:16.880
that the banks will have no option but to respond to.
00:34:22.740
I have no doubt in my mind that the banks could respond positively to that
00:34:29.080
So that's the first thing that the conservatives could do, get tough.
00:34:33.220
Secondly, cast your mind back to all the fee assignment that the UK government banned
00:34:46.600
Hey, I think you guys need to back off this stuff.
00:35:06.580
I mean, you know, I think we, our banks are expensive, but they're safe.
00:35:15.420
But the TD money laundering scandal was unfortunate.
00:35:20.840
But I think that, that sort of drew the curtain a little bit on,
00:35:27.140
And the other issue is with the mail strike, right?
00:35:31.020
With, with, with about a, I don't know what that number is, can't quite remember,
00:35:35.460
but, but a quarter to a third of payments still being, being executed by a check.
00:35:41.060
With a mail strike, there are all these checks stuck in mailbags and the sorting offices of
00:35:47.300
And so we've now introduced a degree of, of, um, instability that our obsession with stability
00:35:59.040
So, so clearly things have got to a pass where what we did yesterday is no longer good enough
00:36:07.500
I, uh, I was owed two settlements that were rather large recently.
00:36:12.100
And then the bank, uh, the postal strike happened.
00:36:16.940
They would, they would put the check in the mail.
00:36:19.360
Thankfully, an electronic transfer, an e-transfer showed up, which, I mean, you, you also have
00:36:24.820
problems with how we do e-transfers in this country that we're not as advanced as, as elsewhere.
00:36:32.620
Uh, Andrew, I want to thank you for your time today.
00:36:36.240
The book is Fleeced, Canadians versus their banks.
00:36:40.780
Um, get it in paperback format because throwing your Kindle or iPad at the wall will cost you
00:36:55.980
This episode was produced by Andre Pru with theme music by Bryce Hall.
00:37:01.540
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00:37:07.820
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