Many banks react to the announcement of the European Central Bank (ECB) of wanting to raise the key interest rates in July and September, in turn with changes in interest rates for savers.
Commerzbank, which even wanted negative interest on savings accounts and had long remained somewhat vague about the future of its regulation, is now announcing that it intends to follow the ECB: "We welcome the fact that the ECB has now initiated the turnaround on interest rates - that's good for our customers, and that's good for us too," said a spokesman: "If the ECB should reduce the negative deposit rates, we will adjust the fees for customer deposits accordingly." Last week, Deutsche Bank announced that it would reduce its negative interest rates in the Oktober abschaffen zu wollen.
New list of 19 banks
Christian Siedenbiedel
Editor in Business.
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The comparison platform Verivox has now presented a list of 19 other banks that are already discontinuing their negative interest rates or greatly expanding the allowances before the ECB.
Among them are several Sparda banks.
The Sparda-Bank Nuremberg wants to abolish the custody fees on the current account and the negative interest on the call money account as of July 1;
In addition, she wants to pay interest on time deposits again and a bonus for deposits on the call money account.
The Sparda banks West and Hanover also announced that they would no longer charge custody fees from July 1st.
The negative interest rates are also abolished at the VR banks Rhein-Neckar and Middle Franconia West, as well as at the Volksbanken Bremerhaven-Cuxland, Hameln-Stadthagen, Schwarzwald-Donau-Neckar and Thuringia Mitte.
Other institutes highly raise their allowances, so that they should no longer play a role for many, in addition to the ING Germany, for example, also Degussa Bank, the Oldenburg State Bank and the Volksbank Rhein-Nahe-Hunsrück.
The pioneers of negative interest also announced that these regulations would soon be phased out.
A spokesman for Raiffeisenbank Gmund on Lake Tegernsee said, as soon as the ECB made changes to the negative interest rates, the bank would "immediately" pass them on to the customers.
The German Skatbank in Thuringia, which had also been one of the first banks with negative interest rates around eight years ago, announced that it would raise the allowances to one million euros on July 1.
And not only, as planned, for existing customers, but also for new customers.
Ralf Fleischer, CEO of Stadtsparkasse München, said that internal preparations are already being made in his company to abolish custody fees.
Around 5,000 customers are currently paying such fees – as soon as the ECB reference interest rate is zero or more, they would no longer be charged.
No more cancellations due to negative interest rates
According to a spokesman, the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf, which caused a stir with account terminations when negative interest rates were introduced, ended this topic in March.
Until then, the Sparkasse had terminated the accounts of customers who did not respond to letters introducing negative interest rates after several warnings and handed over the money to the district court.
In this way, millions of customer accounts were deposited with the district court, which are supposed to go to the state treasury after 30 years.
This practice has now been completed, it said.
With the ECB, negative interest rates will be abolished altogether.
Hamburger Sparkasse also wants to follow the central bank on negative interest rates.
The institute, on the other hand, has noticeably raised the interest rates for savings deposits, said spokeswoman Stefanie von Carlsburg: "For ten-year fixed-interest savings, there is already 1.7 percent - with an investment period of three years, there has been 1.0 percent since June 17." Max Autumn from FMH financial advice reports on other interest rate increases: FinTech Klarna has increased its interest for fixed deposits to twelve months to 1.23 percent, Renault Bank also increased and Crédit Agricole had recently increased fixed deposit interest ..
Consumer centers want to keep fighting
The consumer advice centers announced that they would continue to take legal action against negative interest rates despite everything.
"The ongoing legal proceedings on negative interest rates are not made redundant by the announcement by individual institutes that they intend to forgo negative interest rates in the future," said David Bode from the Federation of German Consumer Organizations (VZBV).
In principle, one wants to clarify whether storage fees in the form of negative interest rates towards consumers are permitted on giro and call money accounts.
In addition to the five well-known lawsuits against negative interest rates, the association has filed a sixth – it affects Sparda-Bank Berlin.
They had given customers a form for a custody fee to be signed and wanted it to be treated as an individual agreement.
Bode said: "We also consider that to be inadmissible."