The Office for Competition and Consumer Protection announced that it would keep the bank's practice of enabling a credit holiday application.
Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki felt that housing credit should be an opportunity for his own M, not a ball and chain, and the government passed the right to use statutory credit holidays. The banking system is reported to withstand, for the borrowers it is a huge relief, because as a result of the interest rate increase, the loans went up more than twice.
Holidays may be granted this year with 4 months, months 2023 – rod one month in each quarter. The banks are obliged to provide simplified application procedures, but it is already clear that some of them will be ‘uphill’ for customers.
The President of UOKiK will examine on an ongoing basis how financial institutions implement credit holidays as part of investigations. It's under the glass.
16 banks that operate gold mortgages: Alior Bank, Bank Handlowy w Warszawie, Bank Millennium, Bank Ochrony Środowiska, Bank Pocztowy, Bank Polska Kasa Opieki, Bank of Polish Cooperatives (BPS Group), BNP Paribas Bank Polska, Credit Agricole Bank Polska, ING Bank Śląski, mBank, Pekao Bank Hypotheticny, PKO Bank Hypotheticny, Common Savings Bank of Poland, Santander Bank Polska, SG Bank.
- In investigations, we will examine, among other things, whether and how banks inform consumers about credit holidays. We will also verify whether they have activated the possibility of submitting applications on time, including electronically. We will also pay attention to whether banks do not make it difficult for consumers to take credit holidays or whether they are trying to discourage them from doing so, e.g. unwarrantedly threatening to lose or lower their creditworthiness in the future," says Tomasz Chróstny, President of UOKiK. "We do not accept the practice that already appears in some banks, for example, concerning the requirement of a separate proposal to suspend payment of instalments in each quarter of the duration of credit holidays, or even a separate application to pay a single instalment. This makes it difficult to take credit holidays, introduced to relieve consumers – adds the President of the Office.
Such separate requests exist, for example, in cooperative banks, which also reserve that they may be late considering requests that will be submitted online outside bank hours. In turn, the Bank of Millennium reported that if you want to suspend the payment, you should apply by one hour 19.00. These are difficulties that cannot take place and which are already a source of disputes between banks and their customers.