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Instructions for bank customers: How to avoid negative interest rates and fees

2021-07-03T12:55:11.592Z


Bad news for customers: the banks don't want your money anymore. Even the direct bank ING will in future charge negative interest from 50,000 euros. What you can do now - and how you can even get your money back.


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ING Bank logo

Photo:

Robin Van Lonkhuijsen / dpa / ANP

Another low for all interest savers.

Now ING, the largest direct bank in Germany, also wants custody fees with an account balance of over 50,000 euros.

For new customers and also for existing customers who have so much money on the high edge.

Now where do you put all the money?

And what happened to ING?

At the heart of this are two far-reaching questions:

  • As a saver at banks and savings banks, what will I do with my money in the coming years if I don't need it immediately?

    The comparison portal Verivox has just calculated that the number of banks that charge such custody fees has doubled in the past six months.

    Deutsche Bank, ING, DKB and N26 had already introduced such custody fees for new customers earlier, in 2020.

    A “Finanztip” survey among well-known banks in June also yielded one answer in particular: negative interest rates?

    Yes, we have it.

  • What do the banks do with us when the supposedly efficient ING starts charging something like custody fees from all large customers, instead of simply lending their money to credit customers, as it should be for a bank?

  • Save better with TFI

    Regarding point 1:

    There is a simple strategy for your investment that would have been sensible in the recent past:

    TFI

    .

    • The first 5000 euros on the

      daily money

      so that you never need to go to the overdraft facility again.

      That saves you ten percent interest at the bank.

      If you then get 0.2 percent interest on your overnight money, as with the Austrian subsidiary of the Russian Sberbank - all the better.

      You can rely on the Austrian deposit insurance.

    • Have you already saved more than this nest egg? You can

      park

      anything between 5000 and 15,000 euros in a

      fixed deposit account

      for the planned renovation of the bathroom or the next used car. The French Credit Agricole currently offers a good 0.5 percent per year for two years through its German subsidiary CACF.

    • And the rest - whether 3000, 30,000 or 100,000 euros - you divide up according to your personal risk tolerance.

      A portion of it, as just described, in overnight money or fixed-term deposits without penalty interest.

      The other portion, which you can do without for a long time, is invested in a global

      index fund

      .

      The invests in more than a thousand different stocks, but very boring without quick gamble.

      Good custody accounts are free of charge, like checking accounts in the past.

      And some banks have also reduced the costs for the corresponding fund savings plans to zero.

    TFI with 10,000 or 100,000 euros

    Before the accusation comes here, who has 30,000 or 50,000 euros on the high edge?

    The Frankfurt bankers of ING, formerly a trade union bank, wrote in the justification for their custody fee claim that they alone have around 720,000 customers more than 50,000 euros in one account.

    They should be pushed into a new contract in addition to all new customers and accept the custody fees.

    A little tip: Anyone who has a current account and an extra account (this is the name of the daily money account) with ING can initially invest 50,000 euros each without the threat of custody fees.

    So if in doubt, redistribute with this small move.

    Last year it became clear that customers with large overnight money accounts not only collect at ING.

    The Stadtsparkasse München reported this week that customers had shifted around 1.7 billion euros to it last year in order to avoid the custody fees at other banks.

    Until then she had none.

    Customer deposits on day-to-day accounts in Germany have recently risen to a gigantic 2500 billion euros.

    And the savings rate rose to almost 17 percent on average in 2020.

    In the first quarter of 2021 it was even 23.2 percent.

    That is twice as much as the highs before Corona.

    Those who have had enough could neither travel nor go to the Italians or the expensive boutique.

    Past statistics show that high earners in particular save a lot.

    The savers model

    TFI

    with savings accounts, fixed deposits, index funds comes with a total of 10,000 euros or 100,000 euros.

    The money I need to survive three months from now belongs in the overnight money account.

    The money for the next major purchase in the fixed deposit account.

    And the rest that you don't need for the time being in the index fund.

    More cautious natures take a smaller share of the stock market, more offensive ones take more courageously.

    Of course, you can also put a few thousand euros in a locker.

    But only if you have it anyway.

    Otherwise it would be more expensive than the custody fees.

    And don't forget to let the home insurance company know that you are hoarding a lot of cash.

    Get your money back

    The answer to the second question is more tricky:

    What new banking world is this coming our way?

    No interest, no service, but fees even if they are not legal?

    My answer is get your money back!

    Especially when you have nothing to give away.

    Let us take the example of ING again.

    On the day before the custody fees were announced, it stated that it would no longer charge its customers those fees that, according to a recent BGH ruling, are not lawful.

    That is the least.

    It would have been much more exciting to find out how an efficient bank, two months after the groundbreaking ruling by the Federal Court of Justice (file number XI ZR 26/20), is able to initiate the repayment of fees.

    For most bank customers in the country, the combination of a pure table with the fees (they get money back) and custody fees for high sums on current and overnight accounts could initially be a business.

    You can demand far more money from your bank than fees than you can expect in the coming years in terms of negative interest rates.

    The legal situation is clear: these fees must be reimbursed.

    "That has the potential to be really expensive," says the head of banking supervision at Bafin, Raimund Röseler.

    There is talk of three billion euros.

    You could also say it will be lucrative for customers.

    And it's already trickling.

    This week I received news from the first Volksbanks that have repaid their customers' fees plus interest without complaint.

    And also seen decisions by the ombudsmen of the cooperative banks, who have instructed VR Bank Rhein-Mosel south of Bonn to repay these fees after the bank itself had still bricked the customer.

    The cooperative bank refuses to use the arbitration ruling.

    Customers can now start up a debt collection agency at the bank at the bank's expense.

    You will also find a sample letter here to get your money back by registered mail.

    Only if the sample letter does not work immediately should you use the ombudsmen of the banking associations or the service providers who handle the collection for you at the bank.

    When was the last time you received EUR 250 in interest?

    To give you an example of the dimension: if you opened an account in 2012 with monthly costs of three euros and a free credit card, but have been paying seven euros a month since 2016 plus 20 euros per year for the credit card, you actually only have to use the Pay three euros and can actually claim back around 250 euros - plus interest.

    more on the subject

    • Trend is accelerating: 300 banks are charging penalty interest

    • Savings deposits: ING Germany will in future charge penalty interest for balances of 50,000 euros or more

    • For private customers: Postbank charges penalty interest from as little as EUR 25,000

    • Low interest rates: How to invest your savings well and safelyA column by Hermann-Josef Tenhagen

    Four euros too much a month makes 48 euros a year, plus 20 euros for the credit card.

    Unfortunately, the illegal fees before 2018 are statute-barred.

    Nevertheless, this adds up to 204 euros for the years 2018 to 2020 and another 44 euros account and credit card fees for 2021.

    To collect that much interest in one year, you as a customer would have to commit 50,000 euros to a French bank such as CACF for two years.

    Their French deposit insurance is also very solid beyond the legal rules of the EU.

    There is nowhere such interest from the domestic banks.

    Our little survey showed: Berliner Volksbank, Sparkasse Köln / Bonn, Stadtsparkasse München, Frankfurter Sparkasse and Haspa pay no interest at all on overnight money accounts, ING, DKB, Postbank and Apobank between 0.001 and 0.01 percent.

    So 50 cents to 5 euros for a 50,000 euros deposit.

    If you can warm up for FC Bayern Munich, Hypovereinsbank will pay 0.03 percent up to 20,000 euros on its fan savings card!

    The Deutsche Bank, the Bremische Volksbank or the Stadtsparkasse Köln / Bonn are trying to move their customers' money to banks with higher interest rates in Sweden, Bulgaria or the Baltic States as part of a cooperation with the brokers from Weltsparen or Zinspilot.

    In other words - the Ga & TFI strategy will apply to all bank customers in the future: ward off fees and distribute savings between overnight deposits, fixed-term deposits and index funds.

    The ECB is not to blame for everything

    And one more tip: you shouldn't believe the banks when they lament about the bad, bad European Central Bank (ECB).

    The banks are not that poor.

    The banks have always had to deposit billions with the ECB as security for their transactions, but of course they do not pay negative interest for this.

    In addition, the ECB grants its banks an exemption that is six times the amount they have to deposit as collateral.

    And no penalty interest is due for this either.

    They only become due when banks also park money with the ECB, because they simply no longer have any idea who they can lend this money to.

    It is precisely this lack of ideas that the ECB wanted to remedy with the penalty interest.

    It is also annoying that in 2018 and 2019 some banks earned more from their custody fees than they had to pay the ECB in negative interest rates.

    And that was before the ECB lowered the burden again.

    Therefore, the lawsuits of the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV) against custody fees at individual banks are only too politically understandable. From a legal point of view, the VZBV argues that the customer gives the bank a loan for every overnight money account, and that the bank really cannot demand any money for it.

    Source: spiegel

    All business articles on 2021-07-03

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