# Do bank charges, loan processing fees and insurance premiums count in our Scope 3?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/bank-charges-and-insurance-scope-3

Yes, in principle. Bank fees, loan processing charges and insurance premiums are payments for services, so they belong in Scope 3 Category 1. For most MSMEs they are small and can be estimated spend-based. Interest on loans is a financing cost, not a service, and most companies leave it out; say which way you went.

## What goes in

- Bank charges, processing fees, guarantee commission and letter of credit charges.
- Insurance premiums for property, stock, transit, vehicles and staff health cover.
- Payment gateway and card acquiring fees.

## What stays out

- Interest on loans and overdrafts: a cost of money, not a purchased service. Many companies exclude it; if you include it, state that clearly.
- GST charged on the fees: a tax, not part of the service value.
- Your bank's financed emissions. When a bank lends to you, it reports a share of your emissions in its own Category 15. That does not add anything to your inventory.

## How to estimate

There are no activity units for a bank fee, so spend-based is the method: fees net of GST times a financial services factor from the dataset you use for other spend, adjusted for currency and the dataset's price year. Label the result spend-based.

## Is it worth including

Run a quick estimate. If it is a small share of Scope 3, you can exclude it with a one-line justification under the Scope 3 Standard's relevance test. If a buyer asks for a complete Category 1, keep it in.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible reads purchase and service invoices; where only spend is available it gives a spend-based estimate, labelled as spend-based with wider uncertainty.

- [Spend-based Scope 3: GST, inflation, currency](https://senseible.earth/answers/spend-based-scope-3-gst-inflation-currency)
- [Can we exclude a Scope 3 category](https://senseible.earth/answers/can-we-exclude-a-scope-3-category)
- [Spend-based or activity-based Scope 3](https://senseible.earth/climate-intelligence/spend-based-vs-activity-based-scope-3-method-choice)

Sources: [GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard, Category 1 purchased goods and services](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-value-chain-scope-3-standard)

Last reviewed 2026-10-20.