The Government will prohibit banks from charging commissions to seniors for withdrawing money and will extend free mortgage exchange

Banks will not be able to charge commissions for cash withdrawals at the bank window to those over 65 years of age and people with disabilities starting next year. This was announced this Monday by the first vice president and Minister of Economy, Nadia Calviño, after meeting with the main banking employers and associations of financial users in the country.. This measure will be implemented before the end of 2023, as reported by the vice president.. “This element of unrest is eliminated. A good part of financial entities have already voluntarily adopted the measure,” he added.

In addition, the Executive will also extend to 2024 the free changes of variable mortgages to a fixed rate. This possibility, introduced for the first time in 2023, will be expanded to also include mixed rate loans. This type of mortgage, which has a fixed-rate amortization section and another variable rate, has become a very popular formula after the strong increases in the Euribor that have been registered since the end of 2022.. However, changes from variable to mixed were not protected until now by the umbrella of free. Likewise, the Executive has reported that the maximum commission that can be charged from 2025 for variable rate changes will be limited to a maximum of 0.05%.. A measure that will be extended indefinitely. Both the end of commissions for cash withdrawals at the counter and the free mortgage subrogations will be approved by royal decree, government sources confirm.

Along with these two measures, the Government has announced that it will expand the code of good mortgage practices for families with variable rate loans that have been affected by the sharp rise in the Euribor experienced in recent months.. In such a way that the mortgage relief will also reach families with up to 37,800 euros gross annual income, as the PSOE and Sumar had agreed in their agreement to govern in coalition.

Until now, the income limit to access this measure – which allows the freezing of installments for 12 months or the extension of the life of the loans up to seven years – was limited to households with 29,400 euros of income.. After the expansion, the potential universe of families that will be able to access this relief will increase by around 100,000 homes, as detailed by the vice president.. The Executive initially estimated the number of potential beneficiaries at one million, a figure that the Bank of Spain later lowered to 549,000.

The first vice president, who will leave the Government in the coming weeks for the European Investment Bank, has justified the extension of the income threshold in that in those income ranges there is a greater percentage of the mortgaged population. Banks and Government have also agreed that the economic situation is better than thought when the mortgage relief package was launched and that they do not see macrofinancial risk in the mortgage field.. This prospect of maintaining delinquencies at the current low levels is one of the reasons that makes the agreement with the bank viable.

In addition to this code of good practices, which the Executive introduced as a novelty last year due to the sharp increase in the cost of variable mortgage payments, the original code of good practices that it launched during the Mariano Rajoy government remains in force.. This first code was reformed by the Executive during the last legislature to expand the scope and make the requirements more flexible.

So far, banks have received a total of 55,000 applications for mortgage relief, of which the vice president has not specified how many have been processed, approved or rejected.. The latest figures published by the Bank of Spain in October indicated that only 9% of the requests submitted had been approved, 40% had been rejected and the remaining half were still pending evaluation.

Adherence to the code is voluntary, although practically all banks have subscribed to it so far. In this sense, the AEB employers' association, which represents entities such as Banco Santander, BBVA or Sabadell, has not confirmed that its associates will subscribe to the code, but has stated that “they will be up to the task.” The AEB does not see it as strictly necessary to increase the eligibility threshold, given that the economic situation has improved. In any case, they have asked the vice president that the new framework be “safe, predictable and stable”. “It is important that it does not undergo new modifications,” they added.