Can Citibank unilaterally increase SIBOR loan’s spread? (8) – Citibank goes scot-free, because MAS and CASE unable/unwilling to do anything

The afore-mentioned case regarding Citibank unilaterally increase SIBOR loan’s spread is interesting indeed!  Is this even allowed?

According to the news, there are Citibank’s customers whose property loan contract agreement has agreed term stating that their loan interest is “SIBOR + 0.70%”.  However, now Citibank has unilaterally changed the property loan interest they charge to “SIBOR + 0.85%”, thus increasing the fixed spread rate by 0.15%, and thereby dishonouring the agreed term (“SIBOR + 0.70%”) in the main contract agreement!

Let’s Look at the most crucial terms of the Citibank’s loan mortgage agreement again:

"
(d) Contractual period 1 (for 1st year from date of disbursement) - 3 mths Sibor + 0.7%
Contractual period 2 (Thereafter) - 3 mths Sibor + 0.7%

(e) The minimum effective interest rate shall be 0.8% p.a.. Interest rates are all subject to review and may be adjusted from time to time depending on prevailing market conditions. The bank will not be giving advance notices to the Borrower for any changes in the interest rate.
"

Does the wordings above state that Citibank can unilaterally change the “0.7%”, which is a fixed number in the mortgage loan agreement, to anything else they like? (Note that the 0.7% is usually also known as the “spread”).
I don’t think so!

However, some people believed that Citibank is actually unilaterally invoking their “catch-all” clauses in their “Terms and Conditions” to change the property loan interest they charge “SIBOR + 0.85%”, thus increasing the rate by 0.15%, and thereby dishonouring the agreed term (“SIBOR + 0.70%”) in the main contract agreement!

If this the case, it doesn’t look fair-play to me too, considering that the main contract agreement is what had been agreed by the bank, and few consumers will look through their accompanying terms and conditions documents that run for 10-15 pages that are super wordy, in very small fonts (old people can’t even read them!), and written so cryptically and full of legal jargons and catch-all phrases that there will always be some clauses in these Terms and Conditions that contradict the main contract agreement!

Because of this news, I went to take a look at my property loan main agreement and when I looked at the bank’s “Terms and Conditions” document, I shook my head!  It runs for something like more than 10 pages in super small fonts and I feel that my eyes are very painful to read them, not to mention that they are so general and ambiguous (to me at least) and catch-all for the banks that the banks practically can interpret in any way to their advantage!

After so many complaints and big hoo ha, what is the final update?

Well, at the end of the day, it seems that there it goes, Citibank goes scot-free (because MAS and CASE who are supposed to be helping their citizens (from unfair financial dealings) and consumers (who are supposed to fight to protect consumers against unfair trades under “Consumer Protection Fair Trade Act”) said they are unable to do anything about it)!

Really??? MAS cannot do anything to banks under their supervision even if they engage in unfair trading practise and dishonour their contractual agreement???