“Swedbank” representative Jānis Krops reveals that customers “conclude on average 200 new term deposit contracts per week”. And the savings tool/savings account is used by around 205,000 bank customers.
In December 2022, Latvian banks still had a record amount of household deposits – 10.4 billion euros. “Therefore, we can say that there are more savers in Latvia and the amount of savings has continued to increase last year as well, despite the difficult situation,” says Brikše.
However, it is not the case that customers of all banks have started accumulating rapidly. Bank “Citadele” has noticed that the number of savings accounts has not increased, but the amounts that people invest in them have increased. “Customer savings trends show that the amount of savings increased by almost 14% in six months, however, the number of customers who use a savings account does not change significantly. Customers with an existing savings account are more active,” says Kārlis, chairman of the board of “Citadeles” subsidiary “CBL Asset Management”. Sparrow
Ekaterina Ziniča, head of business development of “Luminor” bank, says that since the autumn of last year, the bank has been observing the return of citizens’ interest in term deposits. True, it is still relatively low. “It should be noted that for almost ten years term deposits had zero interest rates, so there was no demand for them, and the younger generation of customers is even unfamiliar with such a product,” Ziniča says.
Game moment
Out of the four surveyed banks, “SEB banka” and “Swedbank” also offer their customers a payment rounding service. Namely, the customer can activate the service, which rounds the payment up to the euro every time the payment card is used and credits the difference to the customer’s account. Sometimes a few cents are transferred at the time of one purchase, but sometimes almost a euro. The information of the “Swedbank” rough calculation calculator shows: assuming that the average rounded amount will be 50 cents, with three payments a day during a month, you can accumulate 45 euros in this way.
“Using a digital savings account or saving for a specific goal does not cost customers anything – there are no additional commissions. It is rather a game moment to make saving more exciting. Especially if we are talking about saving for a goal. In the mobile app, you can enter a goal, add a picture and then follow along. When the goal is achieved, the client receives a “congratulatory notice”, says Jelena Novaka, representative of “SEB banka”. The bank’s digital savings account is used by more than 33 thousand customers, whose savings amount to more than 17 million euros. The average savings of one customer is around 520 euros.
“Swedbank” savings tool and purchase rounding service are also free of charge.
Citadele and Luminor do not offer a rounding tool or other similar services, but offer savings accounts where customers can save money for their planned goals with manual or automatic payments.
“If the client announces his desire to withdraw the deposit in full or in part in time, that is, more than 7 days in advance, no commission fee is charged. If such an application is made to the bank less than 7 days in advance, a commission fee of 0.5 % of the amount (minimum amount – 5 euros) that you want to withdraw from the savings account,” says Ziniča, a representative of Luminor bank. “Citadel” also has a commission fee if you want to withdraw the savings without applying for it in advance.
