Econintersect: The Federal Reserve has a dual mandate in providing services to banks:
1) They must have a full cost recovery in the long run on services they provide. The average recovery between 2001 and 2010 was 97.9%. The actual cost recovery in 2010 was 105.% – while the estimated recovery is 102.3% in 2011 and 100.8% in 2012.
2) The Federal Reserve is also required to set prices high enough to allow other service providers to compete effectively with the Federal Reserve in providing similar services.
Compared with the price index for 2011, the price index for all Reserve Bank priced services is projected to increase 4% in 2012. Click on images below to enlarge.
Note on the index below, the Federal Reserve’s pricing is increasing at a faster rate than the GDP price index.
The link below leads to a PDF file with the full fee schedule and more backup detail to what was reported above.
source: Federal Reserve