"Dear customer, the market context in which the banking system operates has recently changed, with an increasing impact on banking activity and in particular on the deposit, management and remuneration of current account liquidity". This is how he attacks the letter that Unicredit is sending to account holders these days to present "the unilateral modification proposal” of the My Genius contract, or the account reserved for private customers. In practice, an increase in costs that comes close to entering the institute Andrea Orcell, the new CEO accompanied by controversy over the not exactly "cheap" salary (7 million euros).
Beyond the easy and obvious irony, the reasons are solid: "The market context - we read - in which the banking system has to operate has recently changed, with an increasing impact on banking activity and in particular on the deposit, management and remuneration of current account liquidity". In particular, the persistence ofnegative trend in the value of the 3-month Euribor below the rate that the ECB applies to banks on liquidity held in Frankfurt (the Deposit Facility Rate) "has resulted in the loss of the necessary economic balance between the cost incurred to provide the service and the economic conditions applied to the current account".
In short, liquidity now represents a cost for banks. A phenomenon that also creates alarm because, under the skies of the pandemic, it is constantly growing. Just today, the Bank of Italy found that in March private sector deposits increased at a rate of 11,3% after +12,3% in January, and is now almost reaching the ceiling 2 trillion cash. Much more than loans to households (+2,4%) and business loans (+7,6%). And so, after Fineco, Unicredit also decided to intervene on current accounts. In a similar way, albeit partially different from that chosen by the institute led by Alessandro Foti which has planned to proceed with the closure of private current accounts over 100 thousand euros, in the absence of investments or loans from the bank.
Unicredit, on the other hand, has decided to apply it to all deposits an increase in the monthly fee. And the balance of current accounts and savings deposits will no longer be considered among the parameters for calculating any bonuses on the amount of the fee (envisaged on most accounts). Practically, starting July XNUMXst, the monthly cost of My Genius, the basic account, will rise from 1,78 to 3,03 euros. The most significant increases concern the "transactional silver" contract (from 7,72 to 10,05 euros), the "transactional gold" (from 10,83 to 14,42 euros) and the "transactional platinum" (from 19,97 to 23,56 euros). Unicredit has also provided a series of incentives for investment modules so that those who transform at least 150 thousand euros of liquidity into funds or policies will only have to pay the basic monthly fee of 4 euros in the end but will be exempt from other expenses.
