With almost no commercial effort or significant increases in remuneration, banks manage to capture deposits from individuals at the highest speed in six years. They do this, according to experts, without having to wage a war for liabilities, limiting themselves to offering small increases that do not exceed those of other investment products, but which are sufficient to attract the most conservative savers.
According to the latest data from the Bank of Spain, banks subscribed one-year deposits in November for 14,654 million euros. It is the highest figure since the beginning of the year and more than triple the figure recorded in the same month of 2022, of 4,639 million. Not since late 2017 have they raised so much money in just one month.
Both banks and consumer associations agree that these movements are not so much due to the offers of the entities, which still have sufficient liquidity, as to consumer demand. The forecast is that interest rates will not rise beyond the current 4.5% and that, even, they will tend to fall, so that the remuneration of deposits has little room to rise.
“The cause has more to do with a change in consumer habits than with an increase in profitability”, explains Antonio Gallardo, head of studies at the association of financial users Asufin. “Individual spending had increased between the post-pandemic and the first semester of last year. Now it is not that there is fear, but their profile has become more conservative due to the economic situation”, he points out.
In November, the average remuneration of deposits stood at 2.62%, compared to 2.46% the previous month. It started the year at 0.46% and the increase has not only been slow, but has turned the Spanish banks into the most lagging behind in the euro zone to reward savings, despite the messages of the Vice President of the Bank himself Central European (ECB), Luis de Guindos, who reminds them that “rate increases are for everyone”. In January of last year, Euribor, which is the reference rate for mortgages, was at 3.3%.
Some banking sources recognize that the entities are far from starting a war on liabilities and assure that the gap of lower profitability with respect to the rest of the euro zone is narrowing. What is taking place now, they indicate, is a “strong transfer from demand accounts to term deposits”. “Individuals have come to have 90% of the money in current accounts instead of investing it, and it was not normal”, they indicate.
Between January and November, banks have subscribed deposits for an amount of 117,420 million euros and the forecast is that they will close 2023 with approximately 130,000 million euros, so that they will have far exceeded the 44,976 million of the whole 2022, when interest rates began to rise with almost no improvement in the remuneration of savers. The figure for the year that has ended will, predictably, be the highest since 2016.
