They are asking for a refund of the money they gave when taking the loan in the name of the loan processing costs.
Serbian courts are overwhelmed with more than 30,000 lawsuits from citizens against banks, demanding the return of the money taken and the cost of processing the loan. There are more and more of them every day. There are days when between one thousand and thousand and a half lawsuits arrive at court offices every day, according to lawsuits related to the costs of processing all types of loans, from consumer to housing, Dejan Gavrilovic, a representative of the association Efektiva, which deals with the protection of bank clients, told Politika as a consumer.
Although the Constitutional Court confirmed the illegality of the collection of loan processing costs, ie the previous position of the Supreme Court, according to which banks do not have the right to collect that fee without telling the debtor what the costs are – banks continue to collect them.
– We expect the National Bank of Serbia, as the regulator of the bank’s work, to clearly and unequivocally prohibit the collection of loan processing costs and explain to banks how they can charge it – says Gavrilovic and adds that loan processing costs range from 0.5 percent of the loan value. In some cases, 15 percent of the loan was charged.
He states that in 99 percent of cases, the courts rule in favor of the borrower. The courts themselves are partly to blame for the overcrowding of the courts, which, as he says, unnecessarily procrastinate these light disputes, where there is unequivocal court practice.
– Lately, when a lawsuit is filed, the court notifies the bank, it responds to the lawsuit and the court renders a verdict. Increasingly, we have cases where the verdict is passed without a hearing. The biggest culprit is the NBS, which, despite strong court practice, allows banks to charge for loan processing. We came to the situation that, when a new user takes out a loan, and the bank does not want to give up the processing costs, he takes the loan and immediately goes to the lawyer and files a lawsuit – states Gavrilovic.
However, the experiences of our readers indicate that it is not going so smoothly when it comes to ending court proceedings. Beneficiary of a housing loan D. Mirkovic says that in 2015 she sued the bank for illegal increase of interest and that in the first instance procedure, two years later, it was ruled in her favor, but the money was paid to her only a few days ago, and only when the lawyer gave the execution order. She also sued the bank in 2018 for the costs of loan processing and it was ruled in her favor before the first instance court, but the money has not yet been credited to her account.
Since disputes for loan processing are almost certainly won in court, lawyers are increasingly using the provision of the Law on Civil Procedure to collect immediately after the first instance verdict.
– The court passes a verdict in favor of the debtor, the lawyer immediately goes to execution, and the executors immediately withdraw money from the bank’s account together with default interest. The bank later appealed, and when that verdict is confirmed, nothing to anyone. The money has already been deducted from the account. Default interest is known to be doubled by the amount for which the bank is sued. Banks always file complaints because they do not want to be heard that their clients can easily beat them – says the representative of Efektiva.
He warns that banks, in addition to still charging the cost of processing, also charge the cost of monitoring the loan, for themselves, but there is also a homeowners insurance premium that is charged in favor of the National Home Loan Insurance Corporation.
– The user of the housing loan pays for the insurance without being the insured. He is not an insurance beneficiary. The premium is on average from 1.75 to 3.5 loan values. There are currently 100,000 secured housing loans in Serbia. Between two and three thousand lawsuits were filed. For now, as far as judgments are concerned, the ratio of ten to one is in favor of the debtor. Everyone is waiting for the position of the Supreme Court of Cassation – says Gavrilovic.
According to his assessment, there is something that affects all users of banking services, and those are the cost of maintaining a current account and payment fees. Those two fees, he says, are also illegal.
– If the bank maintains an account, it does so as part of the offer and the work it performs in order to be able to provide an appropriate service to the debtor. I see no reason why the debtor would pay the cost. Also, the commissions for payment are one percent of the paid amount. If you pay 10,000, they take 100. If you pay 90,000, they take a 900 commission. The difference is 800, and they do the same job, that is, they type the same number of digits into the system – says Gavrilovic.
He states that the situation with banks is quite different than it was ten years ago, when they illegally increased interest rates, gave loans at the selling rate and illegally charged default interest. The National Bank banned such activities in 2011, 2013 and 2015, Politika reports.
