For many people, the local savings bank is the first point of contact when they need a loan. But depending on the region, customers are not necessarily in the best hands there. As a recent comparison of the portal Kreidtvergleich.net shows, the interest rates vary greatly between savings banks. The most expensive of them are significantly higher than the offers of other banks.
For the comparison, the interest rates advertised by the savings banks, i.e. the lowest effective or nominal interest rates, were not examined, but rather the so-called two-thirds interest rate. This is the interest rate that at least two-thirds of all borrowers actually have to pay and which credit institutions have been required to communicate in their representative example for several years in accordance with the Price Indication Ordinance.
High interest rates for long-term loans
The result: Customers of the Saxony-based Kreissparkasse Döbeln receive a particularly favorable loan (4.39 percent nominal interest rate or 4.46 percent effective interest rate) – but only for a short-term loan of twelve months. Customers of the Sparkasse in Hamburg have to pay the highest interest rates, where the effective interest rate is 12.74 percent if the loan runs for 72 months.
Editor’s recommendations
Overall, the interest rates on private loans at savings banks are higher than at other banks; the average effective interest rate of the representative example nationwide is 10.54 percent (nominal interest rate: 10.06 percent).
This can be expensive for customers, especially for long-term loans that run for five or six years – so it is especially worthwhile for them to compare the loan terms. For example, according to the Verivox loan calculator, Santander Bank charges a two-thirds interest rate of 8.8 percent for a loan of 20,000 euros that runs for 5 years.
Stingy with daily allowance
At the same time, savings banks and cooperative banks in Germany are particularly stingy when it comes to passing on the deposit interest that they themselves receive from the European Central Bank (ECB) to customers. Almost three quarters of all savings banks and cooperative banks pay less than 1 percent interest on their call money accounts, according to a Evaluation of the comparison portal Verivox from June 2024.
Only around a quarter (26 percent) of all 317 savings banks pay at least 1 percent interest on overnight money, while three out of four institutions pay lower interest rates. The average overnight money interest rate offered is 0.63 percent. The picture is similar for the 369 regional cooperative banks: only just over a quarter (28 percent) of them offer an overnight money interest rate of at least 1 percent, and on average customers have to make do with 0.65 percent.
With these tips you can save fees for current accounts:
With these tips you can save fees for current accounts
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