President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny has declared illegal the clauses concerning the rules of setting exchange rates used for calculating installments of credits indexed to, inter alia, EUR and CHF.
President of UOKiK Tomasz Chróstny has issued three decisions in which he questioned the provisions contained in the annexes to the credit agreements imprecisely defining the principles of determining foreign exchange rates, based on which banks convert credit instalments due. As a result of the existing provisions, banks may subjectively determine exchange rates, which are the basis for determining the amount of instalments paid by borrowers. Consumers’ feedback served as a basis for addressing the issue. The decisions apply to the following banks: BNP Paribas, Millennium, Santander Bank Polska.
“The criteria used by banks to set the so-called spreads blatantly infringe consumers’ interests. The borrowers are unable to check how the banks control the exchange rates published in their tables and, as a result, whether they charge them with excessive credit instalments. The banks, through the provisions of the prohibited clauses, secured themselves the possibility of subjectively determining the amount of exchange rates, as a result of which consumers could pay excessive credit instalments. This is not acceptable. Principles for establishing financial commitments must be fair, transparent and verifiable by consumers,” says Tomasz Chróstny, the President of UOKiK.
The President of UOKiK imposed fines on the banks in the following amounts: PLN 26.6 million for BNP Paribas, PLN 10.5 million for Millennium and PLN 23.6 million for Santander Bank Polska, and he also prohibited the use of the contested clauses.
