The legal dispute over Commerzbank’s penalty interest clauses ends up before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH). “We are going to the BGH,” said Sandra Klug, head of the investment, retirement provision and insurance department at the Hamburg Consumer Center. Commerzbank has no longer charged custody fees since July 2022, after the European Central Bank (ECB) abolished negative interest rates for parked funds from commercial banks. The consumer advocates also want to have the issue clarified legally in the future.
Commerzbank’s regulations, criticized by the Hamburg consumer advice center, stipulated a fee of 0.5 percent per year on savings deposits. New customers had to pay this above an allowance of 50,000 euros; higher allowances of up to 250,000 euros were provided for existing Commerzbank customers. The consumer advocates consider these agreements to be “non-transparent and incompatible with the character of savings contracts”. It is “unjustified that customers not only do not receive any interest, but should also pay a fee to the bank for their credit balance.”
In the first instance, the Hamburg consumer advice center was right: Clauses that provide for a custody fee on savings deposits inappropriately disadvantage customers and should therefore not be used, the Frankfurt Regional Court ruled in November. However, in its appeal decision announced last week, the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court (OLG) viewed the disputed provisions as so-called main price agreements, which are covered by the freedom of contract between the bank and the customer. The OLG found that the clauses were “neither opaque nor surprising.”