The Bank of Spain and the representatives of the financial entities have stopped on Thursday the proposal of the first vice president of the Government, Nadia Calvino, to establish an automatic extension of three years in all variable-rate mortgages for the purchase of a habitual residence.
Calviño has brought this proposal to the dialogue table where the representatives of the user associations and the group of older people. However, as Calviño herself explained at a press conference, both the Bank of Spain -represented at the meeting by its governor, Pablo Hernandez de Cos– as the representatives of the financial entities -through the employers AEB and ECSC– have considered it “premature” to undertake this relief measure for families now. In its place, they have advocated revisiting it at a future meeting, in the month of Septemberthe advisability, or not, of “recalibrating” the scope of the two voluntary codes of good practices agreed so far to relieve families with mortgages, pressured by the rapid and intense rise in interest rates in the last year and a half .
The Government instructs the CNMC to investigate why banks pay less deposits
bank rejection
“This is not the time to touch it (the code of good practices) in any way. We have to comply with the code, any modification could cause uncertainty for debtors. We also have the bilateral relationship with clients as a tool so that those who do not comply with the criteria of the code but need a solution, the bank is always willing to talk and look for solutions”, the president of the Spanish Banking Association (AEB), Alejandra Kindelán.
Users have welcomed the government’s frustrated initiative. “We have supported the vice president’s proposal for the code of good practices to be expanded as renegotiations are taking place outside of this framework,” he said. the president of Asufin, Patricia Suárez.
According to the data provided by Calviño, in the first five months of this year, around 33,000 families have applied to benefit from the codes of good banking practices to alleviate the monthly burden of their mortgage and another 29,000 have renegotiated or refinanced their credits in accordance with entities, regardless of the aforementioned codes. The vice president explained that she still did not have reliable data on the results of the 33,000 applications submitted, waiting for the Bank of Spain to present them. The figures, in any case, are far from the million families that the Government intended to reach, hence Calviño’s insistence on “recalibrating” its scope and, first of all, adopting an urgent measure such as the automatic extension of three years of the term of the mortgages.
The CNMC will investigate the deposit market
The vice-president has also conveyed to the representatives of financial institutions her complaint about the slowness with which they are transferring the rise in interest rates to the remuneration of bank deposits. “Spanish financial institutions are transferring the rise in interest rates to deposits more slowly than in the past and more slowly than those of other countries”, Calviño complained.
The vice president explained that the Government will entrust the National Commission for Markets and Competition (CNMC) a study to “identify if there are factors that may be preventing the operation of effective competition in this (financial) market and delaying the remuneration of deposits”, all of this “in collaboration with the Bank of Spain”. The objective is also to identify “if necessary some legislative change to be able to act in this area”, said Calviño. The vice president has also advocated promoting a deposit comparator and financial products within the CNMC, “to facilitate competition” between banking entities.
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“Spanish entities compete in all products and market segments”, is the answer given to the vice president by the general director of the Spanish Confederation of Savings Banks (MINT), Jose Maria Mendez. “In Spain there are all kinds of entities that compete. Large, small, local… And they all compete at a national and local level, with each other, also digital. We see that there are offers of all kinds in the remuneration of deposits. We believe that there is no competition problema in Spain, but the opposite. There is a lot of competition and at all levels”, has abounded Alejandra Kindelan (AEB).
The user association To its end perceive it differently. Your president, patricia suarezhas shown itself to be “very concerned” about the low remuneration of deposits and has said that next week they will bring the situation in Spain and Portugal to the meeting of the European Banking Authority (EBA) to “show that in both countries the increase in interest rates is being transferred to deposits more slowly and, above all, lower than the rest of Europe. This is due, contrary to what the employers, to a lack of competition”, has resolved the representative of Asufin.