Unhappy customers team up and threaten to sue banks on mandatory loan contract changes

Unhappy bank customers in Romania have joined internet groups and some of them even started procedures to sue banks over their reshuffled loan contracts, after local banks started to change the existing loan contracts, making them more transparent, in compliance with the new Romanian legislation and the EU rules. As many as 12,000 people have joined such internet groups and share information about the addenda on their loan contracts, while complaining about the way banks have enforced the Government Emergency Ordinance 50/2010. This ordinance entails a more transparent bank interest calculation, linking the final interest to ROBOR or EURIBOR interbank rates, canceling the risk fee and, in case of loans with variable interest, canceling the reimbursement fee altogether. The new ordinance should be applied to around 8 million existing loan contracts. However, consumers complain that some banks have kept interest rates at the same level as before and simply included the ROBOR/EURIBOR into the rate, while increasing the fixed margin. Consumers had expected a lowering of the interest rate - and consequently of their monthly installment, hoping banks would replace their internal interest rate with ROBOR/EURIBOR, while keeping the fixed margin at the same level. Monday (September 20) was the last day when consumers could have signed the addenda to their loan contracts, but many of them complain they haven't been properly informed by banks on the addenda content, nor had the time to study it, as the ordinance had stated. The addenda will be enforced automatically from September 20, even if the customers won't sign them. Some of these customers are asking banks to repay the risk commissions paid since the beginning of the loan contracts, as well as the extra interest rate, calculated based on the bank's internally set interest rate. Romanian lawyers have started procedures to represent groups of these unhappy bank customers. Gheorghe Piperea, of the Piperea & Asociatii law firm, will represent 500 Volksbank and 530 BCR clients who will go to court against their banks. According to Piperea, 3,700 Volksbank and 1,000 BCR customers in total want to sue their banks. “There are also 200 Raiffeisen clients who are close to signing with me to represent them in court,” Piperea has added. Lawyer Marius – Vicentiu Coltuc of the Coltuc law firm has also signed contracts to represent 500 OTP Bank, Volksbank and BCR clients in court. However, The Competition Council expects banks would rather go to court than offer lower interest rates for existing loan contracts, because they expect only a small number of clients to actually start lawsuits against banks. Romania-insider.com