Consumentenbond targets ABN with investigation of millions claim | Financial

The Appeals Committee of the Financial Services Complaints Institute (Kifid) will issue a final judgment on 7 December about the high interest rates that the banks sometimes charge. The study by Consumentenbond Claimservice therefore anticipates a positive outcome for the advocate. “We estimate that ABN Amro has strengthened approximately 80,000 of these loans,” says Stef Smit, director of Consumentenbond Claimservice, a collaboration between the Consumentenbond and claims organization ConsumentenClaim.

Earlier this year, Kifid issued a final verdict for a customer of Crédit Agricole subsidiary Interbank. According to the judgment, customers who took out a revolving credit could expect the interest on that loan to stay in line with the market interest rate. However, that had not been the case with Interbank. According to Kifid, the bank therefore had to recalculate the interest due and repay overpaid interest.

After the lost cause, Crédit Agricole has set up a compensation scheme that tens of thousands of customers can use. This can involve thousands of euros in damage per person. The bank has reportedly set aside more than 120 million euros for the scheme. Nevertheless, complaints are still pending at Kifid about the compensation of Crédit Agricole because the bank would not calculate far enough back to compensate customers with older contracts.

The Geldbelangen Foundation, which represents the client of ABN AMRO, previously estimated that ABN AMRO, Santander, Vesting Finance and Crédit Agricole would jointly spend 500 million to a billion euros to compensate customers who have paid too much interest. According to Consumentenbond Claimservice, there may also be “even more banks that have crossed the line.”

The consumer program Kassa, which pays extensive attention to this subject on Saturday, has calculated in collaboration with Stichting Geldbelangen that customers of ABN not only have paid too much interest on revolving loans, but they also claim that the interest on overdrafts at the bank deviates from the decreased market interest.

ABN also stopped offering new revolving credit at the end of last year. The reduced demand for this product played a role in this, according to the bank.

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