DIn the course of the introduction of negative interest rates, the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf has once again terminated and blocked customer accounts. The money is to be deposited in a Bundesbank account at the district court and will go to the state treasury after 30 years. It is about 1.24 million euros in daily money from eight customers on call money and current accounts for which negative interest should be introduced.
The customers had simply not responded to the corresponding letter from the bank, with which the bank wanted to either agree on a so-called custody fee or to achieve a reallocation of the money.
This is the second round in which something like this has happened. In May, the Sparkasse handed over 2.43 million euros from customers to the district court. In the first round, the savings bank wrote to 1,825 customers who had more than 250,000 euros in their accounts. Together they came to an amount of at least 672 million euros. In the second round, 1730 customers were each written to have more than 130,000 euros in their accounts. Together they came to 380 million euros.
Termination in 24 cases
The vast majority had come forward and either agreed to a custody fee or reallocated the money.
In this second round, the Sparkasse gradually reduced the number of customers who did not agree to either of the two proposals. “Nevertheless, unfortunately, we had to give notice of termination in 24 cases,” said a Sparkasse spokesman. The savings bank was subsequently able to reach an agreement with 16 of these 24 customers.
“Unfortunately, this has not been possible with eight customers who still have a total balance of 1.24 million euros with us,” said the spokesman. These accounts would now be handed over to the legal department of the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf in order to transfer the balances to the district court. For the savings bank, however, the termination was only the “ultima ratio”, the spokesman emphasized: “Our hand will remain outstretched as long as possible, ultimately we would rather keep every customer.”
Sparkasse reserves the right to terminate accounts in such cases. The deposit of the money at the district court is justified with “default of acceptance”: If a customer whose account was terminated by the Sparkasse does not name any other bank details to which a possible remaining amount from the account can be transferred, this is one possibility that the Sparkasse with can make the remaining money.
The savings bank spokesman assured that as soon as the ECB abolishes its negative interest rates, the custody fee of the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf for customers will automatically drop to zero. For some customers, however, this could be too late.
Other banks had partly followed the example of the Stadtsparkasse Düsseldorf – but partly they had only threatened their customers to proceed in a similar way.