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Soon, 0.75 percent penalty interest will be due for SMEs – a burden for companies.
Negative interest rates are a horror for anyone who has a lot of money in the bank. Up to now, wealthy private customers and large companies in particular have paid penalty interest for credit balances at the bank, but small and medium-sized companies are now being asked to pay more and more.
Postfinance, for example, is tightening its regime, as Radio SRF has learned. In the future, smaller companies will also have to pay interest on their credit balances.
Penalty interest from 250,000 credit
For example, an SME boss, from SRF weiss – let’s call her Sandra A. – received the message from Postfinance that she would have to pay 0.75 percent interest from February 1st – for the credit that exceeded the exemption limit of 250,000 Francs exceeds. So far, SMEs have not had to pay negative interest on business account balances.
Like A., many other small and medium-sized companies that have an account with Postfinance are likely to fare as well.
At SRF’s request, Postfinance justified the negative interest rates for small and medium-sized corporate customers by stating that the pressure on their own business had increased significantly in recent years. This is because interest rates on the market have been low for a long time.
The financial institution is therefore increasingly passing the negative interest on to customers. It is said that all of their corporate customers who incur new interest on their balances would be informed. The exemption limit is calculated individually for each customer.
Raiffeisen also charges penalty interest
Postfinance is not the only bank that is increasingly passing the negative interest rates on to smaller companies. On Monday it was announced via the Inside Paradeplatz portal that the Raiffeisen banks are now also asking small and medium-sized companies to pay.
Until now, the Raiffeisen banks were considered reluctant to offer penalty interest for their SME customers.