Spanish families withdraw 18,000 million of their bank deposits in just two months

Spanish families withdrew 5,000 million euros from theirs Bank deposits, which added more than the 13,000 crore they withdrew in January, took the withdrawal volume above 18,000 crore in just two months. The movement is influenced by three main factors: higher consumption due to growth inflation; the search for products that offer greater profitability, which allows avoiding the devaluation of savings; and amortization of loans (especially mortgages) to avoid the upside effect euribor.

So before the financial turmoil caused by the collapse of the Silicon Valley bank in the United States and the bailout of Credit Suisse began, Spanish households continued reducing their bank deposits to leave the total balance in these products at EUR 986,200 million, 0.5% less than in January and a 1.8% drop in the accumulated figure for the year.

Despite these withdrawals, at an annual rate the volume of savings in these products is 2.2% higher than that recorded in February 2022, according to data updated this Wednesday by the Bank of Spain.

Since the outbreak of the health crisis in March 2020, the trend has been for households to steadily increase bank deposits as the economic crisis worsened due to pandemic and households opted for greater prudence in spending. However, a turning point occurred in August last year, when around 3.8 billion euros were withdrawn from deposits, a trend that continued in September and October, although it was reversed in November and December, when the total balance in products grew again to more than one billion euros.

In the case of deposits of companies that keep banking, the volume fell by 1.8% in February compared to January, which means a drop of 5,500 million, to 294,800 million euros. If the accumulated since the beginning of the year is taken into account, the net withdrawal rises to 22,900 million.

In a year-on-year comparison, unlike what happens with household savings, company deposits fell by 3.72%.