The request of the Vice President of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, that the bank remunerate the liability has fallen on deaf ears for now. At least as far as two of the four big Spanish banks (CaixaBank and Sabadell) are concerned, which yesterday made the decision subject to what the market demands.
At the seminar of the Association of Economic Information Journalists (APIE) of the Menéndez Pelayo International University, in Santander, the president of CaixaBank, José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, assured that in the matter of deposits “what happens in the future will be whatever the customer says”. He assured that they will be molded to the requests of the market, although, in any case, he made it clear that “those who must make the decisions in terms of pricing policies are the banks”.
Goirigolzarri acknowledged during his speech that what is paid for deposits in Spain is below the European Union as a whole and recalled that, when rates were negative, companies were charged for deposits, and individuals, no. And now that rates are recovering, it’s just the other way around.
In a study by the Bank of Spain published yesterday, the supervisor warns that in the euro zone “interest rates on new banking operations exceeded the levels recorded before the start of the monetary expansion in April 2023 2014, except in the case of term deposits of households in Spain”. The average return on one-year retail deposits stood at 1.33% in April, compared to 2.27% in the eurozone.
According to Goirigolzarri, the bank’s deposit strategy “should not affect the reputation of the sector” because there are alternative products with good returns. According to him, deposits are not a good medium and long-term savings strategy, as there are other more beneficial formulas, such as funds or other investments.
From Banco Sabadell, the chief executive officer, César González-Bueno, who also participated in the seminar, assured that the remuneration “for term deposits is arriving and progressively”. However, he added that, “with all due respect to the vice-president, it will not be for her to say it” and listed a whole list of products marketed by the bank that offer optimal and guaranteed returns. The first executive of Sabadell also used data from the Bank of Spain to indicate that, on the asset side, mortgage prices in Spain are lower than Euribor.
At the same forum, the president of the banking union AEB, Alejandra Kindelán, declined to comment on whether the delay in transferring the rate hike to Spanish customers caused a bad or good reputation for the sector. According to his opinion, “it will be the entities themselves and the dynamics of the competition that will have to resolve” the situation. On the role of banking associations, Goirigolzarri said that “employers should not say anything in price policies, it would be reckless, a bad practice”.
And in the middle of this scenario, the ING entity assured Santander yesterday that they capture resources with their offers on deposits. The CEO of ING for Spain and Portugal, Ignacio Juliá, stated that the first five months of the year had attracted 1.3 billion in deposits.
Regarding the economic situation, the president of CaixaBank stated that “it is showing a much higher strength than we anticipated last year” and pointed out that its main weak points are “productivity and the imbalance of public accounts “. In this sense, the manager again emphasized the risks of the Spanish economy moving away from the euro zone in terms of GDP per inhabitant. Regarding the evolution of the bank, he assessed the performance of the activity after the merger.
Instead, González-Bueno reviewed the evolution of the bank in recent years since the merger negotiations with BBVA broke down. For this year, he recalled that, “if the analysts say that we will earn 1,000 million, the savings are in the order of 270 million”. In relation to the commercial strategy, the manager assessed the digitization process.
