09.09.2024. / 14:03
BELGRADE – The Draft Law on Users of Financial Services, which the National Bank of Serbia put up for public discussion today, foresees a number of novelties, the most important of which are the limitation of interest rates and the introduction of a special, lower rate of statutory default interest that would be applied to overdue financial obligations of users .
photo: National Bank of Serbia/nbr.rs
Those rates would be 12 percent for obligations in dinars, or 10.25 percent for obligations with a currency clause in euros, while the valid general rate of legal default interest is 14 percent or 12.25 percent.
The determination of the maximum value of interest rates, they stated from the NBS, will take into account the current market conditions, because this maximum value will depend precisely on the value of the reference interest rates of the National Bank of Serbia and other central banks, as well as average market interest rates, reports Tanjug.
In this way, without disrupting market competition, the requirement from Directive 2023/2225 will be fulfilled, which in Article 31 foresees that member states take measures, such as restrictions, to effectively prevent abuses and to ensure that users cannot be charged excessively high interest rates, that is, effective interest rates or the total price of the loan.
In addition to preventing the charging of high interest rates, the interest rate restrictions provided for in Article 12 of the Draft Law should also ensure that in the event of a sudden rise in interest rates on the market, that growth slows down, i.e. that possible sudden market disturbances are not reflected as suddenly on the users .
In addition to the limitation of interest rates for all credit products, the National Bank of Serbia proposes with this draft to introduce a special, lower rate of statutory default interest that would be applied to overdue financial obligations of users – natural persons, from contracts regulated by this law (and the Law on payment services). In addition, that rate would be used to limit the effective interest rate for newly approved loans.
The proposal of the National Bank of Serbia is that it should be a rate that is two percentage points lower than the general rate of legal default interest prescribed by the Law on Default Interest, i.e. it corresponds to the sum of the reference interest rate of the National Bank of Serbia, i.e. the reference interest rate of other central banks for their currency, and six percentage points.
This means that in the case of contracts from this law, the late payment interest rate of 12% for obligations in dinars, i.e. 10.25% for obligations with a currency clause in euros, would be applied to monetary obligations in arrears according to current data, while the applicable general legal rate default interest 14, i.e. 12.25 percent.
Among the changes that will be of most interest to citizens are those related to housing loans.
When it comes to housing loans, newly approved loans with fixed and variable interest rates would be subject to a limit corresponding to the average weighted interest rate for those loans increased by one fifth, or 20 percent.
The NBS stated that since, thanks to the temporary measure of the National Bank, the average weighted interest rate on euro-indexed housing loans was reduced to 4.53 percent, the situation in July this year, this means that when approving new housing loans, the nominal interest rate could not to be higher than 5.44 percent.
When it comes to existing loans with a variable interest rate, to which the temporary measure that expires in December of this year applies, it was proposed that they be subject to an interest rate limit of 5.0 percent until December 31, 2026, after which and for these loans, the same limitation that applies to newly approved ones, the average weighted rate increased by 20 percent, applied.
The reason for this temporary solution is to stop the application of the temporary measure to prevent a larger, sudden increase in the interest rate for existing housing loans.
In addition to nominal interest rate restrictions, effective interest rate restrictions will also apply to newly granted housing loans, which means that in addition to the interest, all additional costs related to the conclusion of the housing loan contract that are borne by the user are limited.
The maximum value of the effective interest rate, which shows the total price of the loan for the user, is limited to the value of the legal default interest, as provided for in this draft law, minus two and a half percentage points.
According to currently valid data, the maximum value of the effective interest rate for newly approved housing loans would be 7.75 percent. Policy
Source: www.capital.ba
