The turn in the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB) has revived deposits, the quintessential conservative savings product. The large Ibex banks that opted, first, for remunerated accounts, have been reactivating fixed-term deposits after raising the remuneration of savings. And this has allowed the big banks to capture money in time deposits in the first half of the year, as can be seen from the financial reports presented at the end of June.
Thus, Banco Santander, BBVA, Caixabank, Banco Sabadell, Bankinter and Unicaja Banco closed the first half of the year with an aggregate volume of fixed-term deposits of 444,179 million euros, which represents an increase of 140,642 million euros in absolute terms. of new money in these products, compared to 303,537 million a year ago, or what is the same, after registering an increase of 46.3%, although in the case of Santander and BBVA the import is global.
Of the listed banks, Bankinter is the entity that has experienced the greatest year-on-year growth in term deposits. Specifically, year on year, the improvement has been 179.39%, which has allowed it to go from a deposit volume (not including sight accounts) of 5,749 million euros to 16,064 million. The entity headed by María Dolores Dancausa offers deposits, with a return of up to 2.50% to certain clients. Likewise, the percentage with which savings are remunerated in the last twelve months has improved, going from 0.04% to 0.74%.
Another entity that has also increased savings on deposits by almost 50% in the last year has been Unicaja Banco. The Malaga-based entity has gone from offering a negative return on savings to 0.37% in the first half of the year. This has meant that fixed-term deposits have closed to June at 9,915 million euros, compared to 5,543 million in the same month of 2022. If the second quarter is compared with the first, the improvement has been 13.6%.
Within domestic banking, Caixabank stands out for volume. The bank chaired by José Ignacio Goirigolzarri has 38,830 million euros in deposits, compared to the 29,706 million euros it had twelve months ago, representing an interannual growth of 30%. In the first six months of the year, Caixabank has managed to increase the balance by 48.7% compared to the end of 2022. Regarding remuneration, in the last year it has gone on to pay savings of 0.55% from the 0.03%.
Finally, Banco Sabadell is another of the entities with a markedly national character that has experienced this change in the tendency to save on the part of the most conservative. Thus, the amount received in new deposits has stood at 21,484 million euros in absolute terms, 5,504 million euros more than in June 2022, when it stood at 15,980 million euros, representing 34.4% tran s raising the remuneration of savings to 0.76%.
Parallel to this increase in term deposits registered by the large banks, there has been a drop in sight deposits, a fall which is the nomenclature used to refer to current accounts. The CEO of Banco Sabadell, César González-Bueno, pointed out that this drop in account balances had been precisely offset by the increase in deposits.
Thus, for Sabadell the year-on-year drop was 4.4% to 103,687 million, almost 5,000 million less. In the case of Caixabank, the drop in the balance of sight accounts in the last year has been 5% (just over 19,000 million euros); 5.3% for Unicaja Banco and 11.04% for Bankinter. Precisely, the balance of Bankinter’s payroll accounts experienced a 4% drop due, among other reasons, to a transfer of these imports to deposits.
The big banks also revive deposits
The two large Spanish banks have also seen the volume of new deposits improve in the last twelve months with improved returns. In the case of Banco Santander, remuneration has gone from 0.05% in the second quarter to 0.72%, only in Spain. Globally, the entity has increased the volume of new deposits by 49.2%, 89,286 million euros, up to 270,609 million euros.
The bank chaired by Ana Botín has been one of the most active when it comes to recovering deposits as a product through Openbank. Its digital subsidiary launched a fixed-term tax in the third quarter of the year and has been raising returns to pay 3.07% over six months, but for clients who link income with the entity.
For its part, BBVA has improved the volume of new deposits by 18% to end the first half of the year at 89,277 million euros, compared to 65,236 million euros a year ago, with an improvement in remuneration of 50 basis points up to 0.53%.
