Postbank is the first German bank to announce its intention to charge for current and sight deposits. This is a landmark decision.
Germany turns a corner
In Germany, a bank has set a new benchmark by deciding to charge for current account deposits from 50,000 euros and sight deposit accounts from 25,000 euros. Postbank, Germany's leading retail bank with over 12 million customers, wants to discourage customers from leaving too much money on deposit.
Consequently, any current account opened with the bank after June 21 will be subject to a 0.5% " custody fee ", a rate that also applies to new sight deposit accounts.
For existing accounts, the measure only applies to deposits of 100,000 euros or more. " We are keeping a close eye on market developments and will decide on further measures in due course," a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank, parent company of Postbank, told Ls Echos newspaper.
While the majority of German banks had no plans to tax retail deposits below 100,000 euros, the situation could gradually change. Commerzbank, for example, has announced that it will be imposing custody fees on its customers from August.
Both players hope to encourage their customers to turn to higher-yielding investments. The rise in inflation in Germany, to 2.5% in May, could work in their favor. It remains to be seen whether savers will choose the alternative of withdrawing their assets and holding them in liquidity, thus triggering a bank run.
Deposit taxation: a threat that has been looming for several months
The threat of taxing deposits is nothing new. In France, a number of private banks have already taken action against customers with assets in excess of one million euros. More recently, mobile bank N26, which has almost 1.6 million users in France, announced that it would be taxing new customers' deposits in excess of 50,000 euros, with a 0.5% penalty. This measure should enable the bank to finance its new services, but also to offset the cost of the negative 0.5% rate applied by the European Central Bank (ECB), which is designed to dissuade banks from leaving part of their cash at its counter.
Deposit taxation is also becoming widespread abroad, notably in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Denmark. Like the ECB, Denmark's central bank applies negative rates, prompting some banks to pass them on to deposits over 30,000 euros.