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Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - In the corona pandemic, many people are putting money on the high edge, but larger sums are increasingly turning into negative business.
In the meantime, 300 banks and savings banks are charging a so-called custody fee of mostly 0.5 percent, especially for overnight money, according to data from the comparison portal Verivox.
In the first 100 days of the current year alone, more than 100 financial institutions introduced penalty interest rates (as of April 9).
"More banks are currently being added almost every day," reported Oliver Maier, Managing Director of Verivox Finanzvergleich GmbH.
In his opinion, Corona has accelerated the trend.
“In the pandemic, many consumers prefer to put their money in an account rather than spend it.
This is a problem for banks because they themselves pay penalty interest on excess deposits, ”said Maier.
"The more savings they have to accept, the greater the pressure on banks to pass these costs on to their customers."
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The savings rate in Germany rose to a record high of 16.3 percent last year.
For every 100 euros of disposable income, households put an average of 16 euros on the high edge.
Commercial banks currently have to pay 0.5 percent interest when they park excess funds at the European Central Bank (ECB).
Even if there are now tax exemptions for certain sums, this remains a billion dollar burden for the industry.
More and more financial institutions are passing on the costs in whole or in part and charging their customers negative interest.
For a long time, banks charged penalty interest, especially for large sums of 100,000 euros or more.
According to Verivox, at least 95 institutes are now charging negative interest from a total balance of 50,000 euros or less.
Others do not rule out a reduction in the limit value.
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«We will not pass on negative interest rates to the general public.
But the question is, where is the end of the breadth, ”said the private customer board member of Commerzbank, Sabine Schmittroth, recently the“ Handelsblatt ”.
"That is why we will keep looking at the amount of the tax exemptions."
They are currently at 100,000 euros.
The Deutsche Bundesbank, too, recently came to the conclusion that a growing number of credit institutions are passing the penalty interest on to customers.
"The proportion of banks in Germany that have negative interest rates on their customer deposits on average continued to increase in 2020," said the Bundesbank's monthly report for February.
For some time now, companies have been affected by negative interest rates on sight deposits such as current and overnight accounts and on time deposits such as fixed-term deposits.
Even with sight deposits from private customers, "an uninterrupted upward trend can be seen", wrote the Bundesbank.
Time deposits such as fixed-term deposits from private customers continue to earn positive interest on average.
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According to consumer advocates, negative interest rates are only permitted for existing and new customers if the custody fee has been explicitly agreed with them.
It is not enough just to change the general terms and conditions.
Verivox evaluates the price notices published on the Internet by around 1,300 banks and savings banks.
Mostly, penalty interest applies to overnight money, but in some cases it is also charged for current and clearing accounts.
In addition, according to Verivox, 18 financial institutions charge a fee for the overnight money account, which is usually free of charge.
This would actually result in negative interest rates.
"The money in the account is less, even if the bank shows nominal 0.00 or 0.01 percent interest."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210410-99-150110 / 4