DELIVERY MAN: What does the rate hike mean for you? What does that mean for savers?
Gerda Holzinger-Burgstaller:It’s a whole new experience for me. I’ve been a board member since 2019. And for me it’s the first time during this time that I’ve been able to experience interest. Of course, that means a big change for us as a bank, but it will also be a completely new experience for our customers for many, many years, both on the savings and on the credit side.
And customers can expect a little more in their savings accounts over the next few days?
Of course we are waiting for the decision of the ECB. We still don’t know what exactly she decides. Some speak of 0.25, some of 0.50 percentage points. What is much more relevant, however, is that we have negative real interest rates. And that won’t change. This is a situation that we have known for many, many years and have learned to live with. Of course, now that inflation is too high, the gap has widened significantly and the pressure to act has naturally increased.
What inflation expectations do you have?
The experts believe that after the high inflation, this development will come back again. The latest forecast for the year as a whole was between 6 and 6.5 percent. But of course none of us have a crystal ball. How far it goes down, I don’t trust myself to predict.
But given the high level of inflation, it doesn’t really matter to savers whether interest rates go up by 0.25 or 0.5 percent. The savings account remains a loss-making business. What do you say to the customers, especially since the situation on the stock exchanges is not good either.
It’s really a challenging environment. I think taking so much risk here to beat inflation is something I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. There are people who can afford to take that risk. Certainly not the general public. This means that it is primarily about minimizing damage and then ongoing protection, taking out risk, stabilizing and building up assets again.