Supreme Court confirms VKI’s legal opinion
Vienna (OTS/VKI) – The Association for Consumer Information (VKI) had sued WSK Bank AG (Vienna Savings and Credit Institute) on behalf of the Ministry of Social Affairs because of inadmissible clauses in their loan agreements. The decision of the Supreme Court (OGH) is now available: It judges various fees and expense clauses in the loan agreements to be inadmissible, including the loan processing fee of 4 percent. According to the VKI, affected customers of WSK Bank have claims for repayment.
The OGH already dealt with the loan processing fee in 2016, but judged it to be permissible at the time. In the meantime, in light of the case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), the Supreme Court made it clear in recent decisions on flat-rate service fees for fitness center contracts that charging fees without specific additional services and without specific costs on the part of the entrepreneur is inadmissible. The VKI therefore wanted to have the admissibility of the (loan) processing fee for consumer credit agreements clarified again by the highest court and brought a representative action against the WSK Bank at the beginning of 2023. Their loan agreements provided for a one-off processing fee of 4 percent of the loan amount, collection fees of 75 euros as well as transfer fees of 15 euros and postage costs of 25 euros, each of which “will be deducted from the loan disbursement amount”.
While the OGH considers the term “loan processing fee” to be sufficiently transparent in itself, it sees the fee according to the contractual structure here as non-transparent because consumers are not only obliged to pay a one-off loan processing fee, but also other fees . It remains unclear which specific services or expenses involved in providing the loan should also be compensated for with a “loan processing fee”. In addition, consumers cannot check to what extent there are overlaps or multiple billing with regard to the loan processing fee and other fees.
Other fee clauses challenged by the VKI (collection fees, transfer fees, costs for postage and printing materials) were also rejected by the OGH due to a lack of transparency. Even with these fees, it remains unclear how often such expenses may be billed, so that multiple billing cannot be ruled out.
“The decision makes an important contribution to fee transparency in loan agreements. “Consumers must be able to check which service should be compensated with what specific fee,” comments Dr. Petra Leupold, head of the complaints department at VKI. “In our opinion, affected borrowers of WSK Bank who have paid such fees can claim them back. “The VKI will support affected borrowers in enforcing their claims after the implementation period of four months has expired,” said Leupold.
Since the decision only affects the special structure of the loan processing fee at WSK Bank, no generalizable conclusions can be drawn about the loan processing fee situation at other credit institutions. “The VKI will now check whether other banks also use such contractual arrangements,” explains Leupold in conclusion.
SERVICE: Further information at www.verbraucherrecht.at/wsk022024.
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