The increase in inflation may also weigh, but in the eye of the Supervision of Bank of Italy it has not escaped that some banks have "increased il cost of the current accounts charged to the customers”, proposing moreover “them unilateral changes of the contractual conditions". This behavior does not go down a Koch Palace and expressly asks in a communication to the credit institutions to evaluate "very carefully" the increase in costs motivated by the increase in interest rates and inflation and the contractual modifications to the detriment of customers.
Especially since the banks already have other earnings opportunities, says the institution led by Ignazio Visco: the increase in official interest rates launched last July by the European Central Bank can have positive effects on the overall profitability of relationships between banks and their customers", which can "offset the increase in costs induced by inflation" .
It is one of the Bank of Italy's traditional “moral suasion”-style moves with which in the past it has managed to put a lot of pressure on the banks to change behavior deemed inappropriate.
After 14 years of falling rates, now they're back: the behavior of banks
Since 2008, the annus horribilis of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the official rates, which in October of that year at 3,25-3,75%, have begun to fall step by step by the European Central Bank, which according to Mario Draghi's legendary "Whatever it takes" tried to get liquidity flowing again in a financial system that had become marble. This is how official rates progressively reached zero in 2012 and even negative from there from 2014 to 2019.
In this period, observes the Bank of Italy, “some banks had zeroed the remuneration current account deposits and ad increased charges at the expense of the customers".
When official rates started to rise again, "intermediaries were urged to review conditions in a direction favorable to customers" and indeed "some banks are proceeding in this direction". But they are still very few banks which remunerate the current accounts of their customers, and even, as emerges from the solicitation of the Central Bank itself, some banks even increase costs.
Average costs on deposits have risen
It is still the surveys of the Bank of Italy that report how i average rates on deposits current account of households rose only from 0,02% to 0,12% between August and December, while in the same period the average loan rate to households rose from 2,76% to 3,27%. Interest on new deposit account transactions has increased, a market that has awakened with the rise in rates: today several banks offer rates of 3% or even 4% on tied up sums. The average rate on new deposit account transactions has more than tripled since the start of the monetary tightening, going from 0,84% to 2,16% in five months.
The great liquidity of Italians on current accounts
The central bank touches on a topic felt by families, used to holding large amounts of money stuck in current accounts. Italian banks hold 1.174 billion euros of household deposits, a figure that has grown rapidly in the months of the pandemic, when Italians have abruptly reduced expenses when they stayed at home. In three years, banks have accumulated around 130 billion euros in additional deposits.
The new rebuke on unilateral changes
Palazzo Koch dedicates a separate chapter to the second aspect of bank shares: le unilateral changes of contracts. The Bank of Italy had already given precise provisions regarding these practices, specifying some fundamental criteria that banks must comply with.
In particular, the central bank says: "The current rules provide that banks and financial intermediaries must send their customers a prior communication explaining the content of the proposed unilateral change, the reasons behind it and the date of entry into force ”. In this way, customers will be able to "evaluate the unilateral changes proposed, to know the reasons for them and possibly to seek new contractual solutions, more appropriate to their needs", reads one of its recent communication.
It remains understood, Visco observes in today's communication, "that, in a market economy, the fixing of the economic conditions of the goods and services offered represents a central element of free entrepreneurial choices" he says. But he warns, “in the presence of unilateral changes, the clientele always has the right to withdraw from the contract without charge by the date of entry into force of the new conditions, also evaluating more convenient offers from other banks.
Music to consumers' ears
Codacons and the National Union of Consumers applaud the recall of Bank of Italy. “The costs of managing current accounts in Italy are constantly increasing” says the Codacons. “The latest report from the Bank of Italy records an increase in expenditure of 3,8 euros, which brings the average cost of managing an account to 94,7 euros, mainly due to fixed expenses, in particular those for issuing and managing payment cards”. According to Codacons "banks are increasingly resorting to the excuse of inflation and higher costs to be borne by them to unilaterally change the contractual conditions for customers, but these increases are unjustified". Furthermore, "thanks to home-banking and apps, today's operating costs for credit institutions have dropped significantly, with a series of operations carried out autonomously by users via smartphones or PCs that have no cost for the banks" he concluded the consumer association.
“It is a bull run that not only must stop immediately, but the course must be reversed immediately. As for the right of withdrawal without charge, we invite consumers to report any abuse to us, ready to report it to the supervisory authorities", clarified Massimiliano Dona, president of theNational Consumer Union.
For the ABI, there are no critical issues related to current account costs
THEbanking association believes that it is a "good thing that price trends are followed to avoid that there are, I don't think there are, elements of a problematic nature" as specified by the president of the Abi Antonio Patuelli. “Banks have services that compete with each other, there are also essentially free services such as for retirees who have minimum pensions. They are simple accounts that every bank must provide. Each bank has its own prices and everyone is free to go to the bank they prefer” he concluded.
