In 2020 the appeals toFinancial Banking Arbitrator – the body for the out-of-court settlement of disputes created on the initiative of the Bank of Italy – yes soared 40%, reaching almost 31 thousand. The driving force was the disputes relating to early repayment of salary-backed loans of the salary. As emerges from annual report on the activity of the ABF, presented on Monday at the Luiss University of Rome, this type of appeal has even increased of 61%, ending up absorbing 55% of the total disputes.
The leap in disputes regarding salary-backed loans or pensions was triggered by the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union of 11 September 2019 on the case Lexitor. The ruling, reads the Arbitrator's report, "established that, in the event of early termination of consumer credit agreements, intermediaries must return to customers, on the basis of the residual duration of the agreement, even costs that were not previously been reimbursed".
Three months after the sentence, the Bank of Italy sent a communication to the Italian credit institutions, asking them to align future and existing contracts to the principles established by the Lexitor judgment.
The Banking Arbitrator therefore considered the pronouncement applicable in an immediate and retroactive manner, but on this point he clashed with "various banking and financial operators”, which “they declared to unwilling to fulfill decisions” of the Abf because they didn't share its orientation. In some cases, "the question has been submitted to the judicial authority - the report continues - which has not yet taken a uniform position on this matter".
In 2020, the most defaulting intermediaries on the matter were Istituto Bancario del Lavoro (Ib), Intesa Sanpaolo, Pitagora, Futuro2 and Bibanca, which together accounted for 75% of the defaults.
As regards the overall activity of the Referee, the decisions taken in 2020 were over 27.400 and they had a favorable outcome for customers in 74% of cases, with the total or partial acceptance of the requests (58%) or with the declaration of the cessation of the dispute due to the agreement reached between the parties (16%). During the year, approximately 29 million euro (compared to 28 in 2019), of which over 22 million returned to customers.
However, the rate of adhesion to the decisions of the Arbitrator fell to 83% precisely because of the disagreements on the part of the intermediaries against the rulings, above all on the subject of salary-backed loans.
