Frankfurt If you want to get money back from your bank, you have to work hard: The deadline for the reimbursement of inadmissible fees, which the Federal Court of Justice (BGH) decided in April of this year, ends on December 31st. The background to this is a lawsuit brought by the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations (VZBV) against Postbank.
The bank had built clauses into its terms and conditions that were worded so openly that consumers could not know which changes the bank was allowed to make without their explicit consent and which were not. In practice, this meant that Postbank changed the fine print and increased or reintroduced fees if customers did not actively object within two months. Bank customers, not just those of Postbank, will be able to recover costs incurred through the back door by the end of this year.
The fact that a judgment that protects consumers from bank charges even had to be made is the result of a trend in the banking sector: in recent years, account management has become more and more expensive, and free checking accounts are even being phased out. A current evaluation by FMH-Finanzberatung for the Handelsblatt illustrates this trend. But it also shows that the cheapest accounts are not always the best.
FMH took a close look at 109 banks and savings banks, where an account costs a maximum of 7.50 euros per month and paperless bookings are free of charge. The most consumer-friendly offers distinguished the financial advice. In addition to the amount of the account management fee, factors that have influenced the place in the ranking are also the question of whether a free girocard and a credit card are added to the account. New customer offers were also included in the evaluation, as well as the question of when penalty interest on credit is due and whether transfers are possible in real time.
Top jobs of the day
Find the best jobs now and
be notified by email.
The result: only seven current accounts received the grade “very good”. Most of them can be found at branch banks that operate nationwide: at Hypo-Vereinsbank, Santander, Commerzbank and “Meine Bank”, a Raiffeisenbank brand in the Hochtaunus region. The test winners are united by the fact that customers there do not pay an account management fee and receive a free Girocard.
The front runner is a Deutsche Bank subsidiary
“For consumers, it is still important that their bank firstly offers a Girocard and secondly that it is free of charge,” says Ania Scholz-Orfanidis from FMH-Finanzberatung. “This is not usually the case with internet banks like N26.” A current account from N26 is nevertheless one of the top offers from the direct banks in the analysis.
This is also astonishing for another reason: The smartphone bank is under special observation by the financial supervisory authority Bafin. At the beginning of November, this limited the institute’s growth to a maximum of 50,000 new customers per year. Nevertheless, according to the FMH criteria, N26 is consumer-friendly.
The front runner among direct banks is the Deutsche Bank subsidiary Norisbank. It can adorn itself with the grade “very good”, as can the Comdirect. In the evaluation of the direct banks as well as of the branch banks, it is noticeable that a consumer-friendly checking account is not only characterized by the fact that all services are free.
At ING, for example, customers do not have to pay for the account or for the Giro or Mastercard. Nevertheless, the institute only made it to ninth place in the FMH evaluation. The reason: There is no charge card there, a credit card variant with which the expenses are debited from the current account at the end of the month. The advantage of such a card: Users save the high debit interest of a “classic” credit card. Charge cards are therefore particularly popular with German bank customers.
Regional banks are less consumer friendly
The regional banks also show that cheap does not always mean good. Here, the Dortmund Volksbank takes first place – despite an account management fee of a proud 47.40 euros. The Girocard costs twelve euros, the credit cards are 30 euros. On the positive side, the institute does not require customers to receive a minimum amount of money and does not charge any penalty interest. “It is important that bank customers always read the small print and not be blinded by it when a current account is advertised as free,” summarizes Scholz-Orfanidis.
Niels Nauhauser, financial expert at the consumer advice center Baden-Württemberg, warns against underestimating the complexity of the cost structure of a current account with a view to the BGH ruling. “Germany urgently needs an independent body that compares current accounts for consumers,” he says. The company Check24 recently took on this task.
In January, however, following complaints from the VZBV, it stopped its service after only five months. The consumer advocates had complained that the comparison platform did not consider enough banks. “It was correct that the comparison was switched off by Check24,” says Nauhauser. He sees the federal government as responsible for “putting the comparison website into operation, which has been overdue for three years”. Berlin announced such a portal in the spring, but there are no concrete plans yet.
More: Exchange manager Alexandra Hachmeister joins the Bundesbank.