Customers vs. banks
The Romanian authorities issued a new wave of fines to lending institutions.
Bogdan Matei, 26.05.2023, 14:00
The Consumer Protection Authority has continued to penalise banks it accuses of unfair behaviour towards their customers. On Thursday alone, eight more local banks were fined for deceptive commercial practices connected to the way in which they calculate credit rates for private persons. The inspectors said they found irregularities with respect to the loans in lei and hard currency with a ten-year period of repayment. The repayment chart showed that in the first years customers would pay 25% of the main loan and 75% accounting for interest rates, which means customers mainly paid the interest rate. To restore the contractual balance, inspectors also proposed, apart from fines, that new repayment charts be published for both ongoing loans and future loans, indicating that the loan be paid back by customers in equal amounts throughout the entire period of repayment.
The eight banks fined include two owned by the Romanian state: Eximbank and CEC Bank. The other six, which are privately owned, have small shares of the market: Procredit Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Techventures Bank, Libra Bank, Garanti Bank and Vista Bank. They were each fined the equivalent of around 80 thousand euros. The first wave of penalties levied by the Consumer Protection Authority occurred in mid May, when 11 other banks were fined for similar irregularities, including big banks like ING, First Bank, Credite Europe, OTP, Alpha Bank, BancaTransilvania, Raiffeisen, BCR, Patria, Unicredit and BRD Groupe Société Générale. Moreover, the Consumer Protection Authority referred the issue of what it described as a the “cartel-like attitude” of some banks to the Competition Council.
The president of the Consumer Protection Authority Horia Constantinescu:
“We realise this situation, which was easy to predict the moment the loan was given by the banking and financial institutions could have protected consumers who were told they were actually being done a favour by being offered an option for repaying the loan under conditions which Im convinced they did not understand.”
The Romanian Association of Banks did not share the view of the Consumer Protection Authority, saying the calculation in question has been stipulated in the Romanian legislation from the first regulations of the lending activity. Bankers issued joint statements saying the defamation of lending institutions through erroneous and libellous accusations is abuse. (CM)
