After over a year ago interest rates in Poland fell to almost zero (the NBP reference rate is only 0.10%), a lot has become banks changed. The interest rate on deposits or savings accounts has dropped to a symbolic level of as much as 0.01 percent, and some banks even decided that there is no need to fool around and has removed many deposits from its offer altogether. The trend of increasing fees for banking services has intensified. Low interest rates mean that banks can earn less on interest – so they are looking for additional income from fees and commissions.
The first banks even introduced negative interest rates on corporate accounts. There were rumors that interest-bearing in the red there may also be high sums on individual customer accounts – the President of UOKiK quickly objected to this idea. But banks are also experimenting in a different way – testing fees for running savings accounts (which means that with lower amounts, the fee is higher than the interest for the client, so he loses on such an account).
Additionally, there is excess liquidity in the banking sector. This means that banks have more deposits than they need to lend. Of course, the situation differs in specific banks, but in general – the banking sector does not have to pieni±dze customers especially struggle. And in fact, bankers more and more often repeat that they are somehow … a burden for them.
The more funds in the account that are not working, the greater the cost of keeping them for the bank. Clients often do not realize it, but maintaining very high-value deposits, especially in foreign currencies, provokes very high costs for banks. They are related to maintaining an appropriate level of contributions to the Bank Guarantee Fund, the required reserve or the need to pay bank tax, which is charged on assets.
– he explains in an interview with the portal wnp.pl Tadeusz Białek, vice president of the Polish Bank Association. He also gives a suggestive example:
If we sign a contract with a storage facility, no one is surprised that – when returning something to it – you have to pay a fee for this. It should therefore not be surprising that under the current conditions, the bank may charge an appropriate remuneration for safe keeping of money
– says Białek.
Representatives of the Polish Bank Association and banks in Poland have already created a working group that they lead work conceptual framework for the negative interest rate on deposits. Białek points out, however, that the decision to introduce it will be up to each of the banks, and if it is implemented by one, it is rather only from a specific (probably very high, at least hundreds of thousands of zlotys) threshold.
The vice-president of the Polish Bank Association also believes that if interest rates remain at a record low and banks still cannot earn enough on interest, the trend of increasing fees for banking services will continue.
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