More than 7,500 Triodos Bank customers from all over Spain have seen how their savings and investments have been trapped in the self-proclaimed ethical bank, as reported by the Catalan Audiovisual Media Corporation (CCMA), which foresees that part of a solution may come to the users and users before the summer.
According to CCMA This is a problem that Triodos Bank is having in several European countries: “There are more than 43,500 customers from 5 countries – the Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany – who bought the so-called CDAs, Certificates of Deposits for Shares, for a total value of 1,250 million euros”.
In November 2022, the Court of First Instance 54 of Barcelona ordered Triodos Bank to return to a client the 18,228 euros that it had spent on 244 Certificates of Share Deposits for the bank having breached its contractual obligations.
The ruling, consulted by Europa Press, also obliged Triodos Bank to pay the client the commissions, custodian expenses and interest for the cost of the client’s claim that gave rise to the litigation. The client denounced the “defective commercialization” of these certificates for not having adequate warnings about market risk, and stated that the bank gave erroneous information in this regard.
The Col·lectiu Ronda, which represented the affected party, explained in a statement that this was the first sentence in Catalonia that condemned the entity for this product.
The law firm explained that “clients who invested in this product have not been able to access or recover their savings since March 2020, when Triodos Bank announced the closure of the internal market”, which was the only place to buy and sell these certificates.
The ruling confirms that, given the changes that the entity made to the product, it ended up significantly changing its nature to the point of being able to state that it is “facing a completely different product from the one initially contracted and for which the plaintiffs were informed”, so that, even if the risks involved had been reported, they would have changed.
In the referenced article from CCMA Several specific cases of clients expressing deep disappointment are exposed, as is the case of Rosa Maria Rodrígueza retiree who invested in the bank and who explains that “we said that, since they don’t give us anything anywhere, at least here you do a good deed. We don’t want profits, we want our money because we are retirees and it is money that we have saved to be able to do things”, and regrets not being able to have the money due to the need to buy a new home: “We needed the money and they gave us a loan for 75% of the savings we had… well, what we have. “
In the same article, the case of Montserrat Roca in what she spits: “They told me that I could sell it whenever I wanted. The only difference with the stock market was that it would take 15 days to be able to sell it. And when I wanted to sell I found that, instead of 23,000 euros, I had 16,000 and I couldn’t touch them.”
Or the case of Rafael Higueras: “We did not want a speculative investment, nor with high interest, we were all with social actions, ecological agriculture, small and micro-enterprises, microcredits…”
Many of the clients insure for the CCMA that it is a product that “sand are similar to that of preference shares that they had commercialized some boxes, as Catalunya Caixa, where clients lost a good part of their savings. There are even CDA investors who had family members or acquaintances who had hooked their fingers.”
The Dutch bank Triodos Bank obtained an attributed net profit of 49.9 million euros in 2022, which represents a decrease of 1.6% compared to the profits recorded in the previous year, as reported by the financial institution on Thursday.
The bank’s total income for the year was 375.3 million euros, 9.8% more. Net interest was 253.1 million euros, 14.3% more than in the previous year
The bank’s total income for the year was 375.3 million euros, 9.8% more. Net interest income was 253.1 million euros, 14.3% more than in the previous year, while income from fees and commissions was 120.9 million euros, 4.2% more.
Personnel expenses stood at 166.8 million euros, for which they experienced an increase of 11.3%, while the rest of administrative costs stood at 107.8 million euros, 9.1% more .
The financial entity has highlighted that sustainable loans increased to 10,600 million euros at the end of December, which represents an increase in this type of credit portfolio of 452 million.
Total assets under management stood at 22,600 million euros at the end of December, which represents a decrease of 6.6% compared to a year earlier. The bank has explained that this is due to the return to the ECB of the TLTRO loans, as well as the impact of falls in share prices or even withdrawals by customers.
The return on capital (RoE) was 4% last year, which represents a drop of one tenth compared to 2021. However, Triodos has qualified that if the restructuring provisions are discounted, the ratio would rise to 5.1%. Likewise, the firm has indicated that it closed the year with a CET1 capital ratio, the highest quality, of 17.3%, which represents a decrease of two tenths compared to that observed in 2021.
As already highlighted in 2013 another article of the Levante EMV the “success has also coincided with the proliferation of comments on the web about its links with Anthroposophy, [de Rudolf Steiner] a kind of religion or model of thought, which some describe as a sect, and which includes elements of occultism and esotericism”.
To which he adds: “Sources close to Triodos Bank admit the relationship of many of its managers with this ‘philosophy’ and deny that it is a sect. ‘In the Netherlands this is known and is accepted normally,’ he points out.”