- Last Tuesday, the government passed a bill on help with the repayment of mortgages
- According to Arkadiusz Szcześniak, the president of the Stop Banking Bezprawiu Association (SBB), the project does not meet the expectations of borrowers
- Szcześniak is also concerned that banks will block borrowers’ access to credit holidays
- The solution borrowers are waiting for is the option to convert their WIBOR loan into a fixed-rate loan – says the expert
- More such information can be found on the main page of Onet.pl
The bill on credit holidays provides, among other things, for the option of suspending the repayment of mortgage installments for eight months. Borrowers can use them in every two months of the third and fourth quarters of this year and one month in each of the 2023 quarters, and the solution will be available to all borrowers who have loans in Polish zlotys. According to the project’s Regulatory Impact Assessment, assuming borrower aid utilization by 50 percent. entitled, the estimated cost of this solution for the banking sector in 2022 and 2023 is approximately PLN 8 billion†
According to Arkadiusz Szcześniak, the president of the Stop Banking Bezprawiu Association (SBB), the project does not meet the expectations of the borrowers.
– With a long-term loan, such as a mortgage, the number of installments that can be suspended should not be strictly regulated, but depend on the duration of the contract† Because the situation is different when the borrower has taken out a loan for 10 years and has 120 installments to pay off, and the situation is different when he has taken out a loan for 30 years and has 360 installments. In addition, borrowers should be able to do this for the duration of the contract, not just until the end of next year – said Szcześniak.
As he argued, in many European countries it is possible to suspend repayments for up to 12 months, which protects people who, for example, have health problems or have lost their job.
– It is not just about the current economic situation, such solutions are simply a means to avoid negative social effects – emphasized the chairman of SBB.
Szcześniak is also concerned that banks will block borrowers’ access to credit holidays.
– We addressed such a situation on the occasion of the statutory credit holidays introduced during the pandemic. Banks very rigorously applied vacation applications filed under the law and offered their vacation. At the same time, they did not explain to their customers that the first one can be obtained for free, and a vacation is paid according to the bank’s terms, he noted.
According to the CEO of SBB, it is the banks that make the decisions in these cases, which in practice are very difficult to appeal.
– You can only write a complaint in standard mode, and this is a torment. Banks made so much trouble this holiday season that we reported these practices to UOKiK to force banks to apply the provisions of the covid law – he said.
Convert credits
In the opinion of Szcześniak, although many people will try to use the solution proposed by the government, even if they succeed the proposed regulations do not solve the fundamental problem of floating rate mortgage loans†
– The solution that the borrowers are waiting for is the possibility to convert their loans with unfair WIBOR into a fixed-rate loan at a level at least comparable to countries such as the Czech Republic or Hungary. Borrowers do not accept the explanation that such a solution cannot be implemented, because if it was possible in the above countries, it can also be done in Poland. However, that requires political will, he said.
Szcześniak also indicated that probably contrary to the intentions of the government, the content of the draft indicates that they too will be able to take advantage of the holiday Swiss Francs†
– The draft mentions a “loan granted in Polish currency”, and the loans denominated and indexed to the franc are loans in PLN, but they have a different name – he noted.
He emphasized that the project does not only cover purely currency loans, when the amount of the loan was specified in a currency and the loan itself was also paid in foreign currency.