High cost of living and rates, savings are collapsing: how many billions in smoke in three months?

Financial education week starting on 20 March here are the

(Tiper Stock Exchange) – The increase in the cost of money and the explosion in prices threaten the piggy banks of families and businesses. From December 2021 to March 2023, the current account balance fell by more than 61 billion euros, from 2.076 billion to 2.015 billion. In just three months, from December 2022 to March 2023, the negative change was equal to over 50 billion. This is what a search for Fabi, Autonomous Italian banking federation from which it emerges that the high cost of living not only did it reverse the trend in household savings, almost close to zero in the first 5 months (0.2% on average), but it began to erode reserves accumulated by the production system.

Among the monetary phenomena from “be careful” there is not only the erosion of liquidity lying in the bank, but also the challenge played on the rates applied to depositsthe. Taking into consideration the most recent data, according to the analysis, lbank rate scissors between 2021 and early 2023 it therefore showed a decidedly disproportionate increase in basis points between interest income and interest expense.

The rate hike still in progress by the European Central Bank still does not raise yields on deposits and the phenomenon is not new. Observing the data relating to recent years, it can be seen that at the end of 2021, the lending rates applied by banks to loans had recorded an average of 1.36% (1.40% for mortgages to households, 1.31% for loans to non-financial companies), while borrowings on deposits amounted to almost 0.21% (0.39% for households and 0.04% for businesses).

In 2022, interest on credit gradually increased, thanks to the ECB’s monetary policy, which stood at an average value of 3.45% in December, synthesising 3.34% of mortgages to households and 3.56% of loans to businesses. With the cost of money brought down to 3.5% in March (then to 3.75% in May), rates on household mortgages reached 4.36% while those on business loans reached 4.33 %. There hasn’t been an equal increase, however, for i passive rates: bank interest on customer deposits barely touched 0.4%, result of the average between those to households (0.50%) and businesses (0.30%).

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