The Savings Bank terminations are correct – economy

Many thousands of cancellations have been sent by savings banks throughout Germany these days. They affect all those customers who, despite repeated requests, have not yet agreed to the new general terms and conditions of the savings banks. She alone has 38,000 letters of resignation savings bank Cologne-Bonn have their customers delivered, the Landessparkasse in Oldenburg 22,000. And in the coming days, many thousands are likely to follow if the other savings banks follow this example.

This led to a small outcry. How can the savings banks have the audacity to throw customers out on the street and take away their only account? Savings bank officials are now confronted with questions like these. But that is unfair in several ways.

First of all, the savings banks have to be given credit for making an overall effort. They sent a lot of letters, analogue and digital, and mostly want they do not even terminate the customer. But they hardly have a choice if people absolutely do not want to agree to the changes and thus undermine the business relationship.

Secondly, people would have had plenty of time in the past few months to agree or to look for another account, of which there are many thousands in Germany, some of them free of charge. The switching service is now digital and therefore very easy to do, comparison portals list the offers clearly.

Third, people have a double standard when it comes to getting excited: Most agree to changes to the terms and conditions of Facebook, Instagram or Netflix without even batting an eyelid. They accept price increases on Amazon Prime either reluctantly or cancel of their own accord. Hardly anyone insists on their right to keep the old terms and conditions, although the price increases on streaming services like Dazn are significantly more juicy than on the local savings banks if it such an increase at all existed with the current adjustments. It is correspondingly unfair that the savings banks are caught in the crossfire of consumers and consumer advocates in this case, while US corporations happily dictate prices.

The layoffs are justified, but an image disaster

A comparison with the large US corporations, which operate with a sometimes insane market power, should of course be viewed with reservations. On the one hand, they usually offer digital services that are not essential to life, but on the other hand they are private companies that, unlike the savings banks, are not involved in public services. It is entirely correct to argue that the Termination A savings bank account is more important because it is more existential than when the sports streaming service kicks you out because you don’t want to go along with the brazen price increase.

That’s why officials at the savings banks have to think through a termination much more carefully and only see it as a last resort if nothing else works. But that too must be clear: in the end, a savings bank must also be allowed to give notice of termination if this is justified and proportionate. Anything else would be unfair, measured to varying degrees and put at a disadvantage compared to all the other companies where dismissal without consent is completely normal.

The dismissal makes sense from a legal and logical point of view, but officials have apparently forgotten one thing in their mass dismissals: From an image perspective, the whole thing is a disaster. There has been talk of mass layoffs in the past few days as well as of customers who don’t even know what’s happening to them. Putting customers out the door is something that many of the large or neobanks are familiar with, but not the nice savings bank next door. As a result, older customers could start worrying that it will soon be their turn if they don’t answer one or the other letter. Such campaigns are also not good advertising for young customers who may have toyed with the idea of ​​switching from a free checking account at a neobank without a branch. The terminations will continue to burden the financial institutions for a correspondingly long time – justified or not.