How do banks change credit and deposit rates?
Are there any changes in credit and deposit rates after the refinance rate decreased by 1,5% and the Bank Code came into force?
The
"Absolut Bank" rates on consumer loans - and now they are
53-60% - have not changed for several months. This is despite the decline in
the refinancing rate by 1.5%. To Euroradio’s question on whether the clients
are frightened by such rates, the bank answered with another question:
"What do you think, how will people react?".
A female consultant from the "Alfa-Bank" pleases us
by the stable interest rates.
"Our rates have not changed: they stayed 70%, as before. It’s quite a
popular credit. Today, all banks offer approximately the same rate."
The most expensive consumer credit here is 75% per annum.
If we take a credit for Br
25 million for 2 years in this bank, we will have to give nearly twice as much
at the end of the term. "Alfa-Bank" used the refinance rate
reduction of 1.5% to the maximum: the rate on one of the deposits fell sharply
by 6 percentage points!
"The monthly rate makes 35% now, 37% - per three months, while it used
to be 41 and 43% correspondingly", - they say in the bank.
The situation with loans-deposits in most commercial banks looks the same:
lending rates fell to 5%, and deposits fell by 2.3%. Despite the fact that the
refinancing rate has decreased by only 1.5%.
Oddly enough, the "Belarusian National Bank"
has reduced interest rates on loans to almost 30%!
"Lending rates have declined from 16 to 29%, and deposits - by 1.5%.
For example, the deposit "What is needed": it used to be 32% and now
it’s 30.5%. "
Meanwhile,
the "BelVEB" used the refinancing rate changes in
its own way. Here, interest rates on loans ... have grown.
"On March 4, they have increased" - says the girl in the
contact center of the bank. - "Previously, the rate was about 42%, and
now it is about 45%". Still, the credit department provided us more
information and calmed us down:
"They will fall anyway...".
So, I bluntly ask whether
it is a publicity stunt - first increase and then decrease the rates and
advertise it. The bank admits that it is.
Here's how to be on the pulse.