Banks change rules of negative rate game for Danes

Bloomberg

Denmark is about to become a test case for what happens when banks start charging a lot of customers to store their money.
That’s because one of the country’s biggest banking groups just changed the rules of the game, by removing the floodgate that had shielded most retail depositors. Until recently, only people with roughly $1 million in surplus cash at their banks were facing a negative rate. Now, the threshold has been reduced to just over $100,000, with no guarantee it won’t go lower.
Other banks have hinted they’ll follow and economists say the development marks a major shift in how monetary policy will be felt across the economy.
Denmark’s latest response to negative interest rates has made it an even more interesting case study for the European Central Bank.
Jan Storup Nielsen, a senior analyst at Nordea, reckons that many hitherto unknown consequences of negative rates will finally play out in the real world.
“So far, it’s just been a lot of theories about what will happen, but now we get a chance to see it in real life,” Nielsen said. “For the rest of Europe and the ECB this is perfect,
because they can let Denmark learn all the consequences and then see what they should decide.”
Jyske Bank A/S, Denmark’s second-largest listed lender, said it had no choice but to impose negative rates on all private customers with $110,000 or more. Chief Executive Officer Anders Dam said the latest Danish rate cut this month means Jyske is now “losing even more money” when it deposits excess reserves at the central bank at minus 0.75 percent. Dam also says it’s possible the rule will be extended to an even larger group of depositors.
Denmark’s monetary policy is designed to defend the krone’s peg to the euro. But its effect on the broader economy is being closely watched. Danes have now spent seven years with rates below zero — a world record — and Dam at Jyske says he’s bracing for another eight.
Normally, low rates encourage more household spending as it gets cheaper to borrow and less appealing to save. In Denmark, negative rates have led to a surge in mortgage refinancing, but they’ve also coincided with a record build-up of consumer deposits. And, as is the case in much of the rest of Europe, inflation is missing in action.
“Households have gotten all the benefits of negative rates so far, but now they’re starting to see the bad side of negative rates,” Nielsen said.
For consumers, it’s made more sense to keep their cash in a deposit account that paid zero, rather than invest in short-term market products at negative yields.
Jyske’s decision now has implications for everything from debt levels to inflation.
But it may not just be a question of economic theory.
In Germany, lawmakers have debated whether to ban banks from passing negative rates on to retail depositors.
Finland’s regulator has also asked its lawyers to examine the legality of the practice.
In Denmark, politicians have voiced concerns.