• The UFC Que-Chooser compared the bank charges applied at the time of the inheritance.

  • The price differences between banks are staggering, from 120 euros to 527 euros for the same service.

  • The association asks that transparency be made on the real costs of this service.

Are the dead a good business for the banks? This is what the UFC Que-Choose thinks, which publishes this Friday a report on the inheritance costs practiced in France. After a death, the heirs must in fact request the deceased's bank to close his account. The establishment then invoices "the processing of administrative operations until the transfer of assets to the heirs (mainly the receipt of the death certificate, the inventory of funds and the management of post-mortem movements on the account)", indicates UFC.

The consumers' association therefore examined the price brochures and sought to know how much to pay in the context of a "typical" inheritance of 20,000 euros.

This sum was not chosen at random: according to INSEE, 66% of inheritances in France are less than 30,000 euros.

Result: the inheritance costs amount on average to 233 euros, with very strong disparities according to the banks.

Fees absent in Germany

Thus, it will cost you 120 euros at Crédit Mutuel Center Est Europe.

On the other hand, if the deceased had an account with LCL, you will then have to pay 527 euros for the same service.

For the UFC Que-Chooser, these gigantic price differences are proof that "these prices are completely disconnected from the costs actually borne by the banks".

Bank charges for inheritance: very variable rates per

20 Minutes

To ensure this, the association looked at inheritance costs practiced elsewhere in Europe (Spain, Belgium, Italy).

"This comparison makes it possible to identify that the costs incurred in France are twice as high as those charged in Belgium or Italy (respectively 107 euros and 112 euros), and even three times higher than in Spain (80 euros) », Explains the UFC Que-Chooser.

"In Germany, inheritance bank charges are no longer even practiced following a recommendation from the national banking authority", tells us Matthieu Robin, financial sector project manager at UFC Que-Choisir.

The government not keen on coaching

Faced with this observation, the association asks for a "strict framework" of prices. A position which is not, for the moment, that of the government. In September 2020, in a written response to a deputy, the Ministry of the Economy and Finance justified itself as follows: "Pricing transparency must allow consumers to play competition, the only one able to act on the level of prices. . (…) A regulatory framework for inheritance costs could lead to setting a price higher than the market price and to which all establishments would align, or even to increasing the price of other services by compensation ”.

An argument that does not convince Matthieu Robin. “When you subscribe to a banking establishment, you do so according to the cost of the bank card, the credit facility, but never in relation to inheritance costs. So they escape any competitive logic. Our wish is that transparency be made to know that this service really costs the banks ”.

For this, the UFC Que-Choisir relies on the work of the Advisory Committee of the Financial Sector (CCSF).

The body, which brings together banks, insurance, but also consumer associations, was to floor this year on the subject of bank inheritance fees.

But the work has been postponed, because of the "banking lobby", assures the UFC.

With the survey published this Friday, she therefore wishes to alert public opinion so that the issue is once again on the agenda.

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