Victims of misselling: methods of unfair work of banks with the population are named

Only a few days later, when her daughter came to visit, the pensioner decided to show off her successful financial decision (she was promised a deposit at the highest percentage!) and showed her contract.

It turned out that it was concluded not with a bank at all, but with an insurance company. And the contract was not a deposit, but an accumulative life insurance contract. The surprises did not end there: according to the terms of the agreement, every year for 5 years it was necessary to deposit 100 thousand rubles into the account!

Unfortunately, there are a lot of similar stories happening now. Often the victims of deception are elderly people who are easily misled.

Let’s list some methods of unfair work of banks with depositors.

We regularly monitor the financial services market using the “secret shopper” method. Every year, it turns out that misselling – when complete information about a product is not conveyed to the consumer or one product is sold under the guise of another – continues to be common in the market.

Clients are told about deposits at high interest rates, subject to the parallel opening of other financial products: investment or savings life insurance, individual investment account, mutual funds, etc. Or they immediately offer programs other than the classic deposit.

“What’s wrong with that?” – you ask. The fact is that a real guarantee of the safety of your funds can only be obtained through a deposit. Here the state undertakes that money in the amount of up to 1.4 million rubles. will be returned if the bank’s license is revoked. In addition, deposits are guaranteed to have a certain return. The percentage is stated on the first page of the contract.

You can also withdraw the entire amount from the deposit at any time. Yes, sometimes the agreement stipulates that in this case you will lose interest, but the money deposited will still be returned in full.

And one more thing: depositing money into the account can only occur at the request of the depositor; no mandatory contributions are provided here.

In the case of investment products, all these conditions are not met. There is no guarantee of the safety of funds. You never know what interest will be charged or whether it will happen at all. You can withdraw money ahead of schedule, but sometimes not all of it, but only the so-called redemption amount, which is a certain percentage of the deposited amount.

Another problem for depositors is that it is usually impossible to study the deposit agreement in advance. Banks provide this document only after depositing money into the cash register. The consequences are very sad. Many investors read the agreement when they get home, and many wonderful discoveries await them.

As our research shows (monitoring of the savings services market was carried out in August 2023), some banks oblige depositors to open a card. They motivate this by the fact that deposits and subsequent withdrawals of money can only be made through it.

If a person is not going to use it – and most often this is not the case, because if the card is needed, it is already there – then this story becomes completely useless for the consumer. And by and large, harmful. Producing cards that customers are more likely to turn in after their deposit expires increases plastic waste. And there are already a lot of them – about 300 million tons annually, more than half of which are sent to landfills.

The most unpleasant thing is that in some cases you need to pay for servicing the card or comply with a number of requirements when using it. For example, keep at least a certain amount in your account or spend a certain amount per month.

Sometimes banks offer clients to open a savings account instead of a deposit. Among its advantages is that the money deposited in the account can be spent at any time. At the same time, interest will not stop accruing on savings.

But managers may “forget” to talk about important nuances. I will list some of them.

• Interest accrual on the minimum balance. Let’s assume you deposited 5 thousand rubles into your account. And a couple of days later they contributed another 100 thousand. So, at the end of the month, interest will be accrued on a smaller amount – by 5 thousand rubles. If on some day at the beginning of the day (00.00 hours) there are no funds in the account, then there will be no interest for the entire calendar month.

• The interest period is calculated not from the moment you deposited money into the account, but from the beginning of the calendar month. For example, if you opened an account on the 25th, then you will receive interest only for 6 or 7 days.

• The promise of a higher rate may come with a number of conditions. It happens that attractive interest rates apply only when making purchases for a certain amount or are accrued only for a certain amount, and if it is exceeded, they are reduced to standard values.

• Account maintenance fees may sometimes apply. For example, if there are no transactions on it for a certain period of time.

Sometimes banks, when closing an account, do not issue cash at the cash desk, but ask you to withdraw it from an ATM. It would seem that there should be no problems here – unless you take into account the discomfort when you need to withdraw money in front of other office visitors.

But there are also nuances. In the branch of one of the banks, which our “mystery shoppers” investigated, there were two ATMs: in one of them it was possible to withdraw only an amount that was a multiple of 2 or 5 thousand rubles, and in the second – a minimum of 500 rubles. As you understand, not all amounts people require fit these parameters. It would seem that the money is not great! What if we take into account the losses of all buyers? This will result in good additional income for the bank.

By the way, in an application for closing an account there is often an automatic check mark next to the item stating that the unwithdrawn money is transferred to the credit institution.

If you want to put money in the bank, then it is better to provide for a number of points.

• Of course, a bank deposit is still the most reliable tool for saving savings. Try to keep an amount not exceeding 1.4 million rubles in one bank. with interest. If something happens to the credit institution, this is the money that will be returned to you.

• You don’t always need to focus only on the deposit rate. Often the most profitable programs contain a number of restrictions. For example, such a deposit cannot be replenished or withdrawn from it without losing interest.

• If you don’t know exactly when you’ll need money, and don’t want to lose income, open a deposit from which you can withdraw money without losing interest. There will be some minimum balance that must remain on the account until the end of the deposit agreement (for example, 10 thousand rubles), and the rest of the amount can be used without restrictions.

• Deposits with capitalization are interesting – when every month interest will be added to the increased deposit amount, summing up with the accrued interest for the previous period. But you need to take into account that for such programs the rate may be lower.

• Read the entire contract carefully. Often important terms are written in small print.

• It is better to diversify your savings. Open deposits in different banks, and keep part of the funds at home in case of emergency expenses.

• Avoid impulsive financial decisions whenever possible. Even if the terms of the deposit or account seem very attractive to you, take a short break to carefully study the offer. It is possible that it will turn out to be beneficial only at first glance.

• Avoid opening any financial products other than deposits at the bank. We talked about their risks above.

• It is advisable to carry out your first experience of interaction with a bank offline. Come to the office and open a deposit. Online transactions can be done later. Do not forget that there are fraudulent structures whose Internet pages imitate the sites of well-known banks. There is also a chance that the application will freeze or you will transfer the wrong amount.

• Do not trust your money to microfinance organizations or any other financial structures that are not part of the deposit insurance system. They may promise high interest rates, but there is a high risk that you will not see your money later.