In December, deposits stood at a record high of over 309 billion lei (EUR71 billion), RON40 billion more than three years ago, according to data of the Bank Deposit Guarantee Fund.
The rise was mainly driven by household savings, which amounted to RON115 billion in December, compared to RON85 billion at the end of 2008. The volume of household savings rose, as the crisis led to a radical change in client behavior, from credit-fueled consumption to savings.
“The biggest contributor to the household savings increase were deposits of under EUR100,000 or their leu equivalent. One can notice a clear preference for deposits in the Romanian currency,” according to the guarantee fund.
Clients prefer to save in lei because interest rates are twice the ones for euro deposits, but also because fear over the leu’s devaluation has somewhat subsided thanks to the stability of the exchange rate in the past few years.
The highest interest rates on leu deposits exceed 8% a year, while euro deposit rates rarely exceed 4%-4.25% a year.
Household savings rose fast at the beginning of the crisis, when the funding crunch force banks to raise leu rates to 15%-16% a year. Since 2010, interest rates fell steadily, but the volume of deposits continued to rise as clients grew cautious.
The largest amounts were deposited by Romanians with the 33 banks participating in the local guarantee scheme, which attracted deposits of RON107 billion in total. These deposits are guaranteed up to EUR100,000.
Almost 14.7 million deposits were part of the local guarantee scheme at the end of December, accounting for 99.99% of the overall number of individual savers.
Corporate clients and public institutions had deposits of almost RON195 billion at the end of last year, rising 4.3% in the last months of 2011 alone.
The rise was mainly driven by companies’ savings with banks that are part of the guarantee scheme.
The fund does not publish separate data for the deposits of companies and of public institutions. But the statistics of the Romanian central bank reveal that companies had deposits of around RON70 billion at the end of November.
The number of deposits of corporate entities amounted to around 914,000 at the end of December, with 96% of them being part of the guarantee scheme.
But many corporate deposits significantly exceed the EUR100,000 guarantee cap, which means holders would only recover some of their money if the bank defaulted. (EUR1=RON4.3463)
(English version by Daniela Stoican)