Commission for withdrawing from the ATM. Commission for maintaining the account. Transfer fee. Commission per card. Overdraft commission. For several years, bank commissions became the great source of income for banks that, with interest rates at times negative, did not have many other ways to find profitability. They also became the main source of complaints from customers, annoyed by paying at every step for concepts that were difficult to justify. However, with the increases in interest rates, the model begins to change and, although commissions will not stop hovering in banking activity, they can become, in the opinion of experts, a weapon to compete or discriminate against clients.
After more than a year of progressive interest rate increases by the European Central Bank (ECB), banks already earn 3.4 times more from interest than from commissions. According to the results presented in the first half of the year, they obtained 40,292 million from interest margins, which is the difference between the money they receive for the loans granted and the money they pay for deposits. The figure is 23% higher than that of the first half of last year and 42% higher than that of the same period in 2021.
This strong takeoff contrasts with what happened with the commissions. They continue to grow, but less than the interest margins: 2.8% compared to 2022 and 17% compared to 2021. Experts assure that, if only the commission data in the second quarter of the year are taken, it is already There is a first decline compared to the first, but caused by a decrease in the number of operations and not because the banks have lowered them.
“We had had zero interest rates for years and the banks had to survive with commissions. When the excess liquidity runs out, my impression is that they will possibly begin to be more competitive due to commissions and undertake commercial actions,” says Antonio Castelo, from iBroker, as long as delinquencies remain under control.
“We are already seeing a decrease in banks' income from commissions in their activity in Spain,” says Alberto Valle, director of the Accuracy firm. “The trend is that they continue to decline, although for now more due to volume than due to a change in trade policy.” Next year, he says, if interest margins continue to rise, banks could begin to compete on fees.
The head of studies at the association of financial clients Asufin, Antonio Gallardo, believes that banks should start cutting commissions, especially when "they have kept them high for years with the argument that interest rates were very low." The danger, he says, is now that there are entities that want to take advantage of it to “throw out the bad clients and get the good ones.” “Discrimination through commissions” could occur.
Among the large Spanish banks, there are two, CaixaBank and Sabadell, that in the first half of the year received less money from commissions than in the same period of the previous year. The first obtained 1,846 million euros in this way, compared to 1,994 million a year before, while the second earned 697 million, compared to 729 million in the first half of 2022. Santander and BBVA increased the commission item, especially due to international business.
