GER: Savings Bank Customers’ Rights Strengthened

Feb 9, 2024 Benn-Ibler Rechtsanwälte

The German Federal Court of Justice (Bundesgerichtshof, hereinafter BGH) has ruled that the standard right to cancel a premium savings contract can continue to exist even after the maximum premium level has been reached. This applies, for example, in cases where a longer contract term is provided for in the contract documents and the parties didn’t make a different agreement by mutual consent.

Premium savings is a special form of savings account that pays a savings premium in addition to the interest. The premiums on the savings amounts increase gradually up to an agreed year.

The case in question is a case of two savings bank premium savings contracts, each with a term of 99 years. After the third year of saving, the annual premium increases continuously until the end of the 15th year of saving. Citing the low-interest period, the defendant bank terminated the contracts in 2019. The plaintiff now sought a declaration that the savings agreements with a premium that it had concluded with the defendant savings bank were still in force. As to the validity of the termination, the lower courts had come to different conclusions.

The BGH has now decided:

The defendant Sparkasse may not, by withdrawing the plaintiff’s right to the granting of savings premiums before the maximum amount has been reached through ordinary termination, frustrate the special savings incentive provided by the contract’s design as a savings contract with a premium scale.

However, according to the BGH, the right of the defendant savings bank to terminate the contract with due notice may be excluded even after the maximum savings amount has been reached if the parties have agreed on a term of the contract which extends beyond the maximum savings amount. The wording of the general terms and conditions is unambiguous in the present case. An average, not legally educated customer would easily assume that a fixed term of 99 years was agreed. Moreover, this opinion would be reinforced by the fact that the heading of the clause is ‘duration of the contract’. An average customer would not understand the defendant Sparkasse’s argument that the long term of the contract is based solely on technical reasons.

BGH XI ZR 88/23 (14 November 2023)