What are loan processing fees?
Loan processing fees are costs that banks charge for processing the loan application when granting a loan. Because every bank has to check your application for a loan based on its own criteria. Until you as a customer get the urgently needed money paid out, the credit institutions first determine your creditworthiness or your creditworthiness as the applicant. Such fees do not only apply to a certain form of credit, but are levied on almost all types of credit. The only exception: small loans or installment loans. Here, the banks often do without a credit check.
Not all banks have the same names for these costs. Credit institutions also hide the loan processing fees behind the terms processing commissions or Closing Fees. If such fees appear in your loan application, you pay them in addition to the agreed interest.
Important: In several judgments, the BGH has declared such loan processing fees (file number XI ZR 170/13 and XI ZR 405/12) to be illegal, you can reclaim them. However, there are statutes of limitations that you should be aware of: If you paid loan processing fees in 2015 or earlier, your right to a refund is now statute-barred. Because the statute of limitations is three years.
Many loan providers stopped charging processing fees after the court ruling, but if you signed a loan agreement after 2015 that included loan fees, you can still claim them back.