Unreasonable salaries of bankers

2023-01-28T04:51:56.895Z

The salaries that managers grant themselves are not related to efficiency or productivity The rapid rise in interest rates is increasing the concern of citizens, especially those who have mortgages. The Asufín association estimates that there has already been an annual extra cost of more than 2,000 euros for every 100,000 euros of mortgage. In new mortgages, interest rates have risen to 2.85% on average, after increasing 1.35 points in one year, according to the Bank of Spain. Similarl

The rapid rise in interest rates is increasing the concern of citizens, especially those who have mortgages.

The Asufín association estimates that there has already been an annual extra cost of more than 2,000 euros for every 100,000 euros of mortgage.

In new mortgages, interest rates have risen to 2.85% on average, after increasing 1.35 points in one year, according to the Bank of Spain.

Similarly, consumer credit has climbed to 6.87%.

However, these intense increases do not correspond to the return on savings, which remains largely frozen.

Demand deposits are remunerated at 0.03%, after increasing 0.01 points and the weighted average rate on savings stood at 0.70% last November, after increasing 0.64 points.

The difference between what banks charge for their loans and what they pay to savers, known as the interest margin, reached 28,000 million during the first half of 2022, 11.2% more than the same previous period.

"The increases in interest income and commissions were the main determinants of the good evolution of profit observed in the first half of 2022," says the latest

Financial Stability Report from

the supervisor.

During the first three quarters of last year, banks earned 14,686 million, 29% more than in the same months of 2021.

Despite these extraordinary results, the banks are reluctant to pay the new government rate (about 1,500 million per year) established precisely to redistribute the profits generated by the rise in interest rates.

And they turn a deaf ear to the calls of the Governor of the Bank of Spain to allocate a part of the profits to capitalize the entities instead of increasing dividends.

In this context, we have learned the data from the European Banking Authority that reveal that the number of Spanish bankers with a salary of more than one million euros in 2021 amounted to 221, 72% more than the previous year.

It turns out that the average salary of Spanish bankers (2,164,088 euros per year) is the second highest in the European Union, only surpassed by Austria.

They are unreasonable salaries that managers grant themselves without regard to efficiency or productivity.

Spanish banks are the least solvent in Europe and it is difficult to justify that the productivity of a banker is 46 times higher than that of an average employee (45,921 euros in 2020), according to the INE.

It should be remembered that after the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh (USA), in 2009 the Financial Stability Board recognized that "compensation (salaries and bonuses) in important financial institutions is one of the factors that contributed to the financial crisis that It started in 2007."

And he warned that "important financial institutions must ensure that variable compensation does not limit their ability to strengthen their capital base."

When they are badly given, we already know who pays for the piper, the taxpayers.

In Spain there are already 73,000 million euros due to the last crisis.