The banking supervisory authority BaFin has warned Germany's banks to implement a ruling by the Federal Court of Justice on account management fees for checking accounts “fairly and transparently” - this also includes reimbursing customers for unjustified account management fees from the past.

Apparently, the guards have the impression that this has not yet been done appropriately.

“If an institute should permanently and systematically fail to observe the BGH decision and the expectations of the supervisory authority, the BaFin will consider supervisory measures”, threatens the authority.

Christian Siedenbiedel

Editor in business.

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In a ruling of April 27, the Federal Court of Justice had declared the previous practice of banks to simply notify customers of changes such as fee increases via clauses in the general terms and conditions of current accounts and then to regard silence as consent to be inadmissible (Az.XI ZR 26/20 ).

Since then, bank customers have been trying to get back wrongly charged fees from previous fee increases.

The Stiftung Warentest had designed sample letters with which bank customers can assert claims.

How much someone can reclaim seems to vary widely;

it should not go to insanely high amounts of up to a few hundred euros for each individual bank customer.

Overall, however, this adds up to a lot for the banks. 

The reactions of the banks have so far been quite subdued.

After a survey of 43 regional and national institutes, the consumer advice centers reported that far too little was happening.

Many institutes still argued that they were “still in the process of examining the BGH ruling”.

Sometimes a very small amount is reimbursed.

One institute even reacted by terminating the current account after the customer had not waived the legitimate claim.

Supervision threatens now

The supervisory authority has now specified how it imagines a fair procedure.

It is necessary that the banks inform their customers "clearly and comprehensibly" about the consequences of the BGH ruling.

You would need to designate a contact for customer questions on the subject.

In addition, they would have to create a new contractual basis and would no longer be allowed to levy unlawful charges.

They would have to fully inform their customers about the changes, also in order to enable a reimbursement claim to be quantified.

Then wrongly charged fees would have to be reimbursed.

In addition, the institutes would have to set up provisions for possible burdens from the proceedings.

Who pays?

Most recently, a long-standing customer of the Frankfurter Sparkasse contacted the FAZ. He had sent a sample letter to the institute and wanted the money back. The savings bank had offered him 25 euros and wanted to see all claims settled. The man wanted to know: should he accept that? Martina Schröder from the consumer center said: "Of course it depends on which account model the customer has - but the amount offered sounds very small." . If this does not react, the consumer can initiate an arbitration procedure via the ombudsman.

Legal-Tech Conny, which bundles the interests of bank customers on this issue, has now received offers from 75 institutes, a good half from savings banks.

The Berlin law firm Gansel recently published a list of institutions that, at their insistence, would have paid in one or more cases.

These are, for example, the Sparkasse Marburg-Biedenkopf and the Stadtsparkasse Emden, the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, the Fidor Bank, the Volkswagen Bank and the Netbank, the Debeka Bausparkasse, the Sparda-Banken West, Augsburg and Munich and among the Volksbanks the one in Bremen , Bibertgrund, Ostprignitz-Ruppin, Brilon-Büren-Salzkotten, Bremerhaven-Cuxland, Schaumburg, South Westphalia, Odenwald, Olpe-Wenden-Drolshagen, Würzburg, Vechta, Bonn, Memmingen and Westerwald.