The Federal Government may want to protect small savers with a ban on punitive interest. But while the audit is still in progress, Savings Bank President Helmut Schleweis is already preparing bank customers for significantly higher costs - with lower interest rates or higher fees.
"The European Central Bank suspends the previous economic rules," said Schleweis in an interview with the "Handelsblatt". "We have long pointed out that the effects of one day will reach the general public."
The ECB has recently prepared banks and markets for further easing of its monetary policy, with the aim of preventing further slippage in inflation. For financial institutions, this is likely to mean even higher penalty rates for deposits they park with the central bank.
This prospect sparked a heated debate over whether banks should be able to pass on the additional burdens on a broad basis to their private clients. Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) wants to ban low interest rates for savers, Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz (SPD) would like to have the legal framework at least be examined. However, ECB vice-president Vitor Constâncio doubted in a SPIEGEL interview that ordinary savers actually have to pay negative interest.
State aid required for old-age provision
Above all, the president of the German Savings Banks and Giro Association fears the long-term social consequences of this ECB policy. In Japan, years of negative interest rates have led to "economic stagnation" and "significantly rising costs for bank customers," said Schleweis. "I'm afraid that we will experience this in Germany as well."
Schleweis, who represents the interests of around 380 German savings banks, believes that a ban on negative interest rates is wrong: "That does not fit with our economic and legal system." At the same time, he emphasizes that the savings banks' ability to "buffer the burden of monetary policy is finite." In order to relieve the savers, Schlelege demands state support in private pensions.
So far, the public sector has had monetary policy benefits of around € 360 billion, and private savers have lost around € 300 billion, suggesting that some of these funds should be returned to citizens through financial incentives for wealth creation, "said Schleweis. He proposes to make the "saving of securities through a modernized employee savings bonus more attractive". In addition, "the federal states could promote the real estate acquisition by lower land acquisition taxes."
