Fee dispute BGH ruling costs banks millions

As of: 06/17/2021 3:40 p.m.

Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank have to set up provisions in the three-digit million range because of the BGH’s fee ruling. Savings banks and Volksbanks do not provide any information. The decision of the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) on possible fee reclaims from bank customers is costing the industry millions. Commerzbank expects charges “in the mid double-digit million range”, which are to be booked in the second quarter of 2021, said the CFO of the Frankfurt group, Bettina Orlopp. The ruling is also likely to have an impact on earnings. However, the bank is sticking to the forecast for 2021 of income above the previous year’s level. Thanks to the income from the IPO of the US startup Marqeta, Commerzbank will be able to offset the burden of the BGH ruling, Orlopp said. The second largest German commercial bank has held a stake in the US company since 2015. The amount of their current share is not known.

Deutsche Bank speaks of 300 million euros

Last week, Deutsche Bank was the first institute to issue an estimate of the possible burdens from the BGH ruling. CFO James von Moltke spoke of a total of around 300 million euros. The bank therefore wants to set aside a provision of 100 million euros in the second quarter for possible customer claims. In addition, the institute expects earnings losses of around 100 million euros each in the second and third quarters.

Von Moltke admitted that the Karlsruhe judges’ verdict caught the banking industry off guard. The burdens and yield losses are only temporary. By the fourth quarter, Deutsche Bank will have found solutions to how it can implement fee increases in accordance with the new rules.

BaFin is sounding the alarm

Savings banks and Volksbanks are holding back with statements about possible charges and provisions. A spokesman for the savings bank association DSGV wanted to respond to the request of tagesschau.de do not comment on the subject. A spokeswoman for the largest German savings bank, the Hamburger Sparkasse, said that there had been very few inquiries from customers about the BGH ruling. Therefore, she could not give any information on possible burdens.

The financial supervisory authority BaFin expects the ruling to have serious consequences for the entire industry. “That has the potential to become really expensive for banks. We would not rule out the possibility of half of the annual surplus being in the order of magnitude, which can stand in the fire,” said interim chief Raimund Röseler in mid-May.

Unclear number of reimbursement requests

However, it is still unclear how many customers actually request the reimbursement of previous fee increases. they have to become active themselves. Industry observers also assume that the financial institutions will examine each application individually, so there will be no flat-rate reimbursement.

At the end of April, the Karlsruhe judges decided in proceedings involving the Deutsche Bank subsidiary Postbank that banks must obtain the consent of their customers in the event of changes to general terms and conditions. The clause according to which financial institutions can assume tacit approval if customers do not object to a change within two months, disadvantageous customers inappropriately. Ref .: XI ZR 26/20

Committee of Inquiry Wirecard and the “Mastercard” from Commerzbank

As of: 06/09/2021 3:01 a.m.

The parliamentary groups’ final reports on the Wirecard committee of inquiry are almost ready. Nevertheless, the panel heard witnesses well into the night. It was about early information from Commerzbank. By Arne Meyer-Fünffinger and Josef Streule, BR When the Munich Chief Public Prosecutor Hildegard Bäumler-Hösl entered the “Europa Hall” in the Paul-Löbe-Haus, the Wirecard investigative committee had already spent almost nine hours of intensive witness questioning behind it. At this point in time, the committee had already questioned the head of the FIU anti-money laundering unit, Christof Schulte, and the State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, Rolf Bösinger – with unsurprising results. Both vigorously defended the work of the authority in connection with the Wirecard scandal. “We have no indications that the FIU would not have fulfilled its legal mandate,” emphasized Bösinger. The FIU has been standing for reporting from BR research for days again more and more criticized. In February 2019, Commerzbank submitted a detailed suspicious transaction report to the FIU – including a list of almost 350 suspicious transfers and a short report to make the FIU’s work easier. A reference to the allegations made against former Wirecard managers was not recognizable, explained Schulte and Bösinger. The FIU therefore only forwarded this suspicious activity report to the responsible criminal investigation authorities in Bavaria in July 2020, after seven foreign partner authorities had been sent “spontaneous information” in July 2019. Schulte emphasized that there has been no response from them to this day. And apart from that: “The Commerzbank report was by our standards not a particularly good report,” said the FIU boss.

Prosecutor: Commerzbank report was the “Mastercard”

The Munich public prosecutor’s witness, Chief Public Prosecutor Bäumler-Hösl, arranged the Commerzbank report completely differently when she was interrogated: “The major money laundering report from Commerzbank is the Mastercard. This is the most valuable and most extensive money laundering report. It is elementary. ” “That’s a statement,” said the committee chairman Kay Gottschalk (AfD) spontaneously. The lawyer also contradicted Bösinger and Schulte on a central point: Both had emphasized that Commerzbank’s suspicious transaction report had no reference to the German legal area. That is why the FIU did not forward this to the local authorities any faster. “What alarmed me about the report is the presentation of the facts by Commerzbank,” she said. This refers to the brief report that the bank added to the list of nearly 350 suspicious payments. In this and in the transfers listed by the Frankfurt money house, a relationship with Germany was clearly recognizable, Bäumler-Hösl made clear. With the fact that the report did not contain any reference to Germany, the FIU justified the fact that it had only informed the local authorities of this information more than a year and a half later. “All the reasons given by the Federal Ministry of Finance as to why the FIU did not initially have to pass on the suspicious transaction report have literally collapsed,” commented Florian Toncar (FDP) on the statement by the chief public prosecutor.

Wirecard suspicious activity report on a silver platter

Matthias Hauer (CDU / CSU) had already disagreed with the presentation of the FIU representative before the chief public prosecutor’s statement: “In my opinion, the silver platter is not enough, it must be made of gold.” Other experts had also classified the suspicious activity report from Commerzbank in the run-up to today’s testimony as a “silver platter” on which the bank had served the FIU with its information. The third witness in the Wirecard investigative committee, Rolf Bösinger, State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Finance, countered the accusation that he had withheld information from parliament at an earlier point in time: “These accusations are untenable. I have neither withheld information nor do I have it There is nothing to hide or to conceal. We have informed the German Bundestag and the MPs comprehensively, “he said.

Accusation of “concealment”

These statements did not make an impression on every committee member. For Lisa Paus (Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen) they were “not credible”, Hans Michelbach (CDU / CSU) spoke of “veiling” by the ministry even after Bösinger had been questioned for several hours. BR research had previously reported on internal mail correspondence of the FIU, according to which Bösinger is said to have influenced a dossier of the FIU accordingly. This was drawn up by the authority on the occasion of a special meeting of the finance committee on August 31, 2020. The dossier was an internal preparatory document, stressed Bösinger in front of the members of the committee of inquiry. They will now focus on completing their final reports after months of work. Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble will probably receive a thick pile of papers at the end of this month.

The big banks in the euro zone are increasingly struggling with weak earnings. According to the European Central Bank (ECB), the institutions’ so-called return on equity fell to just 1.53 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020. A year earlier it was 5.16 percent. This key figure shows how high the share of profit is in the equity capital employed. The ECB attributes the fact that the profitability of the banks has fallen so sharply to increased value adjustments in the balance sheets and to provisions in the wake of the corona pandemic. In addition, it is increasingly difficult for institutions to generate profits – this is a longer-term trend in the banking industry in times of persistently low and penalty interest rates.

Share of bad loans decreased

According to experts, the longer the pandemic affects economic life, the greater the risk that credit defaults will put a strain on the balance sheets of the institutes. As the supreme supervisor of the big banks in the euro zone, the ECB has asked the industry to prepare for growing risks. In fact, according to the ECB banking statistics, the institutions have made progress in reducing loans at risk of default. The rate of “bad” loans fell to 2.63 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 – from 3.22 percent in the same period of the previous year. However, according to the statistics, 444 billion euros of such problematic loans are still slumbering on the balance sheets. The ECB currently monitors 115 institutions – including Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. The penalty interest that they have to pay on deposits at the central bank is a burden for the institutes and increasingly also for bank customers. This currently costs the commercial banks 0.5 percent. More and more financial institutions are passing this on to account holders. According to the comparison portal Verivox, more than 100 institutes introduced penalty interest rates for their customers in the first 100 days of the year alone. “More banks are currently being added almost every day,” said Oliver Maier, Managing Director of Verivox Finanzvergleich GmbH. Nice more than 300 banks and savings banks already charge a so-called custody fee – especially for overnight money.