Banks put the breaks on retail banking fees last year, with the rate of growth in retail fees in 2009 the slowest in more than 10 years. The Reserve Bank's latest bank fee survey, released yesterday, shows that fee income from households rose by three per cent to $5 billion last year. This compares with average growth in retail fees between 2003 and 2008 of nine per cent a year. However, the cuts were all on the deposit side. The fee income from housing loans was up 17 per cent, fees on personal loans were up 14 per cent and fees on credit cards were up eight per cent.Fees on deposits were down 11 per cent and "other" retail fees were down nine per cent.The RBA says the increase in housing loan fee income was driven by establishment and early exit fees. "The available information suggests that break fees on fixed rate loans accounted for a significant proportion of the overall growth in fees."A significant part of the growth in personal loan and credit card fees was due to strong growth in exception fees, consistent with the growth in non-performing unsecured personal loans during the year.Exception fees on credit cards made up the largest share of exception fees paid by households. The RBA expects that the removal of or reduction in exception fees by some institutions will see a reduction in these costs in the current year.The fall in household deposit fees partly reflected the impact of ATM fee reforms. Also, banks competed for deposits by waiving account fees for regular depositors.Fee income from business customers rose 13 per cent to $7.6 billion. Most of that growth came from fees on loans and bank bill facilities. Fee income from business loans rose 20 per cent and fee income from bank bills rose 28 per cent.Exception fees paid by business customers rose only two per cent, with a rise in exception fees on loans offset by a fall in exception fees on deposit accounts. Merchant service fees rose two per cent. Total domestic fee income for the 18 institutions surveyed went up nine per cent in 2009, rising from $11.6 billion in 2008 to $12.7 billion last year. The growth rate was nine per cent in 2008 and eight per cent in 2007.Growth in fee income was slower then growth in banks' balance sheet assets. The RBA says this has been the case since 2002.