The war between banks and their customers

Thousands of Romanians have decided to sue banks, unhappy with the way in which they drew up loan contracts, in accordance with a government ordinance passed in July. Meant to eliminate abusive charges, the ordinance stirred a wave of complaints.


The 90-day deadline by which banks were supposed to inform their customers about the adjustment of the older contracts to the new rules expired on Monday. Many banks issued late notices for customers with loan contracts, the latter being thus left unable to obtain the required additional papers.

Only one possible explanation for this was found – bankers might have tried to take advantage of ambiguities in the aforementioned ordinance, which stipulates that the lack of explicit refusal by the customer means their default approval of the amendments.

And this is where the problem lies: in these amendments bankers included new interest calculation formulas, in some cases fixed interest rates being converted into variable ones, while fees that banks were forced to eliminate were, in fact, simply renamed.


All this is happening behind a smoke screen of lengthy contracts that give the impression that interest rates actually dropped. This is a mere illusion, as banks significantly increased interest rate margins, a measure predicted to result in more money being paid by customers once variables in interest calculation formulas are increased.

These reference indices, EURIBOR, LIBOR and ROBOR, each applicable in various cases, are currently at very low levels. In turn, bankers claim that vagueness in the emergency ordinance could lead to losses of up to 900 million euros.

Headlines in the newspapaers



Nicolae Cinteza, head of the Watch Commission within the National Bank of Romania, announced that several banks will sue the state in order to recover the money lost from customers as a result of the calculation formula’s modification and the elimination of fees. Should this be the actual case, estimates value losses at 27 percent of the Romanian banking system’s total profit over the past five years.

Cinteza, quoted by the daily Gandul, said “Why should customers get to pay less over night because a law was passed? A law should not interfere with the administration of loan costs”.



The daily Romania Libera headlined “The match between customers, banks and the state is going into extra time”, also writing that “banks are delaying the enforcement of these new stipulations regarding loans for natural persons”, and that “authorities see the extension of the deadline for signing additional papers as useless, to say the least”.

This measure might suggest that banks could be trying to elude law enforcement. The newspaper Evenimentul Zilei noted that “trials against financial institutions are starting to shape up, after an increasing number of bank customers has decided to sign agreements with attorneys specializing in this field”.

(Radio România Internaţional, Serviciul în limba engleză).