The effects have not yet been determined, but the ruling by the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) on the fee increases can be very expensive for the banks.
The supreme banking supervisor of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), Raimund Röseler, said on Tuesday at the annual press conference: "This has the potential to be really expensive for the banks." In the worst case, he fears fee repayments that will affect some institutes Half of the annual surplus.
Röseler emphasized, however, that the justification for the BGH judgment was not yet available.
Only then can the financial consequences be assessed.
Markus Frühauf
Editor in business.
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In addition, many questions are still open, for example whether the judgment only refers to account management fees or also to securities accounts or credit cards. At the beginning of May, the Federal Court of Justice decided in a lawsuit against Postbank that banks should not simply notify their customers of changes to their general terms and conditions, such as fee increases, by letter and then regard silence as consent.
With regard to the consequences of the corona crisis, such as a wave of insolvencies with loan defaults, Röseler was calm: He gave the all-clear for the banking system as a whole, but there is still no complete picture. Institutions that were on shaky feet before the pandemic could exit the market. According to his information, there is currently an almost double-digit number of banks in the “BaFin intensive care unit”. These are examined more closely by the supervisory authority because of their risks.
In addition, according to BaFin, banks will have to prepare for further loan defaults.
"We have to assume that not all companies in the real economy that have been hit by the pandemic will recover," said Röseler.
It could take a while for this to have an impact on the banks.
Here he referred to the example of the restaurants, which are often financed by the breweries.
It could take some time before their problems spread to the banks.
In general, the German institutes have an income problem, but no problem with bad loans.
"Where the money is made, there are the risks"
The top banking supervisor of the European Central Bank (ECB), Andrea Enria, recently complained about the careless handling of some banks with loan loss provisions. For Röseler this is not a problem for the German banking industry. The German institutes directly supervised by the ECB had set up risk provisions of 6 billion euros for the current year, of which only 270 million euros had been used after the first two months.
Röseler called on the banks due to their weak earnings situation to reduce costs “even more rigorously” in order to be competitive again. After the scandals surrounding the payment service provider Wirecard and also the Greensill Bank, Röseler, who heads BaFin until the future President Mark Branson took office at the beginning of August, announced that he would adapt supervision to the new reality. "We have to deal even more with the business models of the institutes, look behind their facade," he said. Classic indicators such as equity ratios or liquidity figures were no longer sufficient to identify all risks. That was already the case with Wirecard or Greensill Bank, whose key figures were all very good. Röseler particularly wants to work with banks and other companieswhose business model appears to be very complex or very innovative, examine the earnings. "Because where the money is made, the risks lie."
He also went into the reform of the financial supervision, which became necessary after the criticism of the BaFin in dealing with the Wirecard scandal. One of the most important changes was the “focus supervision”, ie looking behind the facade. This should start this month. The rapid reaction force, the task force, will begin its work in mid-August. "Especially when things have to be done quickly, we don't want to have to start a time-consuming award procedure in order to hire an auditor." In the case of Wirecard, BaFin had to commission the German accounting auditor to check balance sheets. However, this was not adequately staffed. Nevertheless, Röseler dampened expectations that were too high:"As a supervisor, we can be forensically armed to the teeth; in a constitutional state it will never and can never succeed in preventing any kind of crime."