About €27 million in unaccrued commission and interest has been returned to bank customers since 2019, as a result of regulatory oversight measures. The figure was presented by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of Portugal (BDP), at a parliamentary hearing, arguing that it is about the central bank’s effective action in defending consumers.
According to Luís Máximo dos Santos, of this amount, “20.8 million euros for cases of irregularities in the collection of commissions and 6.9 million euros for settlement of irregularities in the collection of interests”, considering that this return was related to charges brought in violation of the provisions of the law. However, he acknowledges that the charge, “often”, is not caused by “any fundamental deviation in organizations, but from poorly calibrated computer systems or from software that you did not understand properly”.
Also in May, Deco published a study that indicated an average 47% increase in annual costs for key products and services linked to the current accounts of BPI, Novo Banco, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Santander and Millennium BCP banks.
But despite official guarantees that “commissions will not disappear”, because it recognizes that “there are too many” costs to be borne by the financial sector and that it is not possible to prevent the collection of all commissions under penalty of punishment, the banking sector considers that they are “perhaps creating” macroeconomic conditions such that “Bank commissions eventually come down.” He added: “Banks also do not want to alienate customers, they need them and thus the explanation that negative interest rates have led to increased commissions.”
With regard to the financial system, Luis Maximo dos Santos believes that “we need strong banks, which can cope with the task at hand in terms of the economy,” he said, considering that banking is compatible with this task in the context of the pandemic and defending that Bank guardianship rights have improved in recent years, with the recognition that “banks have a lot to do”.
