Banking is a godly business.

I am Reint Jelger Baarda.

Most of the money creation in our society is in private hands, the private banks of our European countries.

There are reserve requirements. Banks can create money out of nothing when someone applies for a loan and they grant it. However, when a customer of one bank transfers money to a customer at another bank it costs the bank GOD TIER money at the local central bank.

There are G-Sibs. UBS is one. In the Netherlands there is ING Bank.

Yes, G-SIBs (Global Systemically Important Banks) are subject to significantly higher capital and liquidity requirements than standard banks. Because their failure poses a threat to the broader financial system, regulators require them to hold more loss-absorbing equity to prevent economic fallout. (Gemini)

Hi Gem, could you make this into an explanation text: Eurozone banks that create money when someone loans, the reserve requirement from the ecb and the basel accords, god tier money that works with netting every day between the banks

Google Gemini: To understand how money actually works in the Eurozone, we have to look at the economy as a two-tier system.

The money you and I use is completely different from the «god-tier» money that banks use to settle up with each other. Here is a breakdown of how money is created, how it’s guarded, and how banks settle their debts every single day.

The Two-Tier Monetary System. Bron: thamyrissalgueiro / Getty Images

1. Money Creation: The Myth of the Vault

Most people believe that when a bank lends you €10,000, they are taking ten thousand euros of someone else’s savings out of their vault and handing it to you.

In reality, commercial banks create money out of thin air when they make loans.

The Mechanism: When you sign a loan agreement, the bank simultaneously writes down a new asset (your promise to pay them back) and a new liability (depositing €10,000 into your account).
The Result: New «commercial bank money» (deposits) is created on the spot. This is what makes up over 90% of the money circulating in the Eurozone today.

2. The Guardrails: Keeping Banks in Check

Because commercial banks have the power to create money, central banks and global regulators use two primary «leashes» to prevent them from going wild: ECB Reserve Requirements and the Basel Accords.

The ECB Minimum Reserve Requirement (1%)

The European Central Bank (ECB) requires Eurozone banks to hold a minimum of 1% of specific liabilities (mainly customer deposits with a maturity of under two years) in their accounts at their national central bank.

Is this a constraint on lending? Not really. The ECB’s reserve requirement is incredibly low and functions more as an interest rate stabilizer than a hard ceiling on credit creation. Banks must meet this on average over a 6-week «maintenance period».

The Basel Accords (The Real Constraints)

The real limits on how much money a bank can create come from Basel III (drafted by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision). Instead of focusing on reserves, Basel focuses on:

Capital Adequacy (Solvency): Banks must hold a minimum percentage of equity (capital) relative to their «risk-weighted assets.» If a bank wants to issue more loans, it must have enough of its own skin in the game (equity) to absorb potential losses.
Liquidity Buffers (Liquidity): Under Basel III, banks must hold highly liquid, high-quality assets (like government bonds or central bank reserves) to survive a 30-day severe stress scenario (called the Liquidity Coverage Ratio, or LCR).

3. «God-Tier» Money & Daily Netting

Now, let’s talk about that «god-tier» money: Central Bank Reserves (often referred to as base money or M0).

Regular citizens cannot hold or spend central bank reserves. Only licensed commercial banks have accounts at the central bank (like the Bundesbank or the Banque de France). This money is the ultimate, risk-free settlement asset because it is issued directly by the central bank and cannot default.

How Daily Netting Works (T2 / TARGET Services)

Imagine Bank A’s customers send €100 million to Bank B’s customers throughout the day. At the same time, Bank B’s customers send €95 million to Bank A’s customers.

Instead of physically transferring €195 million back and forth, banks use netting:

At the end of the day, all these transactions are funneled into the Eurozone’s payment engine, T2 (formerly TARGET2).
The system calculates the net difference. Bank A owes Bank B exactly €5 million.
To settle this, the national central bank deducts €5 million of central bank reserves from Bank A’s account and adds it to Bank B’s account.

Once those «god-tier» reserves move from Bank A’s account to Bank B’s, the debt is legally and irrevocably settled.

Feature	Commercial Bank Money (Deposits)	Central Bank Reserves (M0)
Who Holds It?	Public, businesses, and governments.	Only licensed banks and the central bank.
Who Creates It?	Commercial banks (via lending).	The Central Bank (ECB / Eurosystem).
Risk Profile	Subject to bank failure (backed by deposit insurance up to €100k).	100% risk-free; cannot default.
Primary Use	Daily commerce and retail transactions.	Interbank netting, settling, and monetary policy.

RESERVE REQUIREMENTS FOR BANKS IN THE EUROZONE

Could you write: what reserve requirements apply to ABN AMRO in the eurozone. And could you include something about the ‚money multiplier‘.

As an established eurozone bank headquartered in the Netherlands, ABN AMRO is directly subject to the monetary policy framework of the European Central Bank (ECB).

The rules governing ABN AMRO’s reserve requirements and how they connect to the concept of the «money multiplier» are outlined below.

1. What Reserve Requirements Apply to ABN AMRO?

The Eurosystem uses Minimum Reserve Requirements (MRR) to help stabilize money market interest rates and manage liquidity in the banking system. For ABN AMRO, this is calculated as follows:

The Reserve Ratio: The current reserve coefficient is 1%.
The Reserve Base: This 1% ratio is applied to specific short-term liabilities on ABN AMRO’s balance sheet—mainly customer deposits (like checking and savings accounts) and debt securities with a maturity of up to two years.
The Maintenance Period: The bank does not need to hold exactly 1% every single second. Instead, requirements are averaged over a «reserve maintenance period» of about six weeks. As long as ABN AMRO’s average daily balance at De Nederlandsche Bank (the Dutch central bank) meets the 1% target, they are compliant.
The Remuneration Rate: Since September 2023, the ECB pays 0% interest on these required reserves.
Excess Reserves: If ABN AMRO holds reserves with the central bank above their 1% requirement, those excess funds are remunerated at the ECB’s Deposit Facility Rate (DFR).

2. The Reserve Requirement & The «Money Multiplier»

In traditional economics textbooks, the reserve requirement is directly tied to the money multiplier theory, which is mathematically expressed as:

m=R1

Where m is the multiplier and R is the reserve ratio.

With the eurozone’s 1% reserve requirement (0.01), the theoretical money multiplier would be:

m=0.011=100

Under this traditional model, if a customer deposits €100 into ABN AMRO, the bank holds €1 in reserve and lends out the other €99. That €99 is deposited elsewhere, 1% is kept, and €98.01 is lent out, and so on—eventually turning that initial €100 deposit into up to €10,000 of broad money.

The Reality: Why the «Multiplier» is Mostly a Myth Today

In modern central banking, the money multiplier does not actually limit how much money ABN AMRO can create.

In a modern economy, banks do not wait for deposits so they can lend them out. Instead, loans create deposits. When ABN AMRO approves a mortgage or a business loan, it doesn’t hand over cash from a vault; it simply types numbers into the borrower’s account, creating brand-new deposit money out of thin air.

Rather than the reserve requirement holding banks back, modern lending is constrained by:

Capital Adequacy Requirements (Basel III/IV): Banks must hold a certain percentage of equity capital relative to the riskiness of their loans. This is a much tighter bottleneck than reserve requirements.
Credit Demand: The availability of creditworthy borrowers who actually want to take out loans.
Liquidity Demands: The bank must ensure it has enough liquid assets to handle daily withdrawals and payments to other banks.

If ABN AMRO makes a massive wave of loans and finds itself short of its 1% minimum reserve requirement at the end of the maintenance period, it doesn’t have to undo the loans. It simply borrows the necessary reserves from other banks on the interbank market, or directly from the ECB via its standing facilities.

Want to explore how Basel capital requirements differ from reserve requirements?

To understand why Basel III capital requirements actually constrain a bank like ABN AMRO while reserve requirements barely register as a hurdle, we have to look at where these rules apply on a bank’s balance sheet.

It comes down to a fundamental distinction: Reserves are about liquidity (cash), while Capital is about solvency (who absorbs losses).

1. The Core Difference: Assets vs. Funding

To see how they restrict lending differently, look at how they target the two sides of a bank’s balance sheet:

          ABN AMRO BALANCE SHEET
--------------------------------------------
          ASSETS        |      LIABILITIES & EQUITY
                        |
  - Reserves at ECB     |  - Customer Deposits
  - Loans (Mortgages,   |  - Debt / Bonds Issued
    Business loans)     |  ------------------------
                        |  - EQUITY CAPITAL (Buffer)
                        |
[Target of Reserves]    |    [Target of Capital]
Does the bank have      |    Does the bank have enough
enough cash to handle   |    of its own skin in the game
daily withdrawals?      |    to absorb bad loan losses?

Reserve Requirements dictate what percentage of your liabilities (deposits) you must hold in a specific asset (cash reserves at the central bank).
Capital Requirements dictate how much of your total assets (loans) must be funded by equity capital (the bank’s own money/shareholders‘ equity) rather than borrowed money (deposits or debt).

2. Why Capital Adequacy (Basel III) is the Real Constraint

Under Basel III, a bank cannot just create unlimited loans because every new loan increases the bank’s «Risk-Weighted Assets» (RWAs).

If ABN AMRO wants to issue a new mortgage, it must back that mortgage with a minimum percentage of high-quality equity capital (primarily Common Equity Tier 1, or CET1).

How it restricts lending:

The Risk-Weighting Bottleneck: Not all loans are treated equal. A safe government bond has a $0\%$ risk weight (requiring $0\%$ capital). A residential mortgage might have a $35\%$ risk weight, while an unsecured corporate loan has a $100\%$ risk weight.
The Capital Tax: If ABN AMRO wants to issue a $€1,000,000$ corporate loan (100% risk weight), and its regulatory CET1 capital requirement is $12\%$, the bank must possess at least $€120,000$ of unencumbered equity capital to support that loan.
The Hard Limit: Unlike reserves—which the bank can easily borrow overnight from other banks or the ECB if they run short—equity capital cannot be borrowed overnight. If ABN AMRO runs out of excess equity capital, it has only two choices: stop making new loans, or go through the slow, expensive process of issuing new shares or retaining corporate earnings.

3. Comparing the Two Barriers

This table shows why Basel III rules are a active bottleneck to credit creation, while reserve requirements are mostly a post-crisis accounting exercise:

Feature	ECB Reserve Requirements (1%)	Basel III Capital Requirements (~10.5%–15%+)
What it measures	Cash at the central bank vs. short-term customer deposits.	Loss-absorbing equity vs. risk-weighted loans.
Primary Goal	Liquidity: Ensuring the bank can settle daily interbank payments.	Solvency: Ensuring the bank doesn’t go bankrupt if borrowers default.
Ease of Acquisition	Extremely Easy: If short, the bank can borrow reserves in seconds on the interbank market.	Very Difficult: The bank must retain profits (not pay dividends) or issue new stock.
Impact on Money Creation	Passive: Simply a minor transaction tax on the deposits created after lending.	Active Limit: A hard ceiling. If capital is depleted, loan creation stops instantly.

The «Leverage Ratio» Backstop

To make things even tighter, Basel III also includes a Leverage Ratio. This is a non-risk-weighted cap. It dictates that a bank’s Tier 1 capital must be at least $3\%$ of its entire exposure (including cash and off-balance sheet items), ensuring banks can’t use complex mathematical models to artificially «risk-weight» their assets down to zero.

In summary: If ABN AMRO wants to expand its lending business, it doesn’t look at its ECB reserve balance—it looks at its CET1 capital ratio. Capital is the finite fuel that allows the lending engine to run; reserves are just the oil that keeps the gears moving smoothly.

Eurozone banks must hold a minimum reserve in their national central bank, equal to 1% of specific customer deposits and short-term debts. These mandatory funds help stabilize market interest rates and manage daily cash flow. [1, 2, 3, 4]

The Reserve Base

Banks calculate their required reserves based on specific items on their balance sheet before a new period starts. [1, 2]

Included Items:

Customer deposits (such as savings and checking accounts)
Debt securities (like bank bonds) with maturities up to 2 years [1]

Excluded Items:

Deposits from other banks or central banks
Repurchase agreements (short-term loans where a bank sells securities and buys them back later) [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Maintenance and Averages

Reserve amounts are set for fixed periods that usually last for about six weeks. [1, 2]

The Average Rule: Banks do not need to hold the exact reserve amount every single day. Instead, they must meet the 1% target on average over the entire maintenance period. [1, 2, 3]
The Purpose: This acts like a financial shock absorber. If a bank needs short-term cash, it can dip below its required daily limit, provided it makes up for it on other days. [1]

Remuneration and Penalties

The European Central Bank (ECB) does not pay interest on these required minimum reserves. The remuneration rate is strictly 0%. [1, 2, 3]

If a bank fails to meet its average reserve requirement over the maintenance period, it faces a penalty rate. [1]

Note: For the official lists of institutions subject to these rules and the exact penalty rates, you can visit the ECB Minimum Reserves page. [1]

Yes, ABN AMRO is subject to the Basel Accords.

As a major European bank headquartered in the Netherlands, it is directly supervised by the European Central Bank. The ECB and the Dutch Central Bank implement the Basel standards into binding European Union law, known as the Capital Requirements Directive (CRD) and Capital Requirements Regulation (CRR).

Because of this, ABN AMRO is required to maintain strict, Basel-compliant capital ratios (such as the CET1 requirement) and liquidity measures.

Basel Framework

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Basel Framework International prudential standards for banks
Basel Committee on Banking Supervision Basel Accords Basel I Basel II Basel III LCR NSFR FRTB Final BIII Reforms
Background
Banking / Regulation and supervision Monetary policy / Central bank Risk / Risk management
Pillar 1: Regulatory capital
Capital requirement Capital ratio Leverage ratio Tier 1 Tier 2 Credit risk SA-CR IRB F-IRB A-IRB EAD SA-CCR IMM CCF Market risk Standardized IMA CVA vol BA-CVA SA-CVA Operational risk Basic Standardized AMA
Pillar 2: Supervisory review
Economic capital Liquidity risk Legal risk
Pillar 3: Market disclosure
Disclosure
Business portal
v t e

The Basel Framework is the set of prudential standards for large internationally active banks, issued by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS).

Initiated in 1975 with the so-called Basel Concordat, it has grown into an increasingly elaborate and complex corpus that integrates the Basel Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision as well as the successive Basel Accords on bank capital requirements and other parameters, namely Basel I (first issued in 1988), Basel II (first issued in 2004), and Basel III (first issued in 2010).^[1]^[2]

Basel Accords

Basel I, published in 1988, covered capital requirements for credit risk. The Accord was enforced by law in the Group of Ten (G-10) countries in 1992.^{[citation needed]} It was augmented in 1996 with a framework for market risk, which included both a standardised approach and a modelled approach, the latter based on value at risk.^[3]

Basel II, first published in 2004, added capital requirements for operational risk for the first time. It was revised several times during subsequent years.^[3] Bank regulators in the United States took the position of requiring a bank to follow the set of rules (Basel I or Basel II) giving the more conservative approach for the bank. Because of this it was anticipated that only the few very largest US banks would operate under the Basel II rules, the others being regulated under the Basel I framework. However Basel II standards were criticised by some for allowing banks to take on too much risk with too little capital. This was considered part of the cause of the US subprime mortgage crisis, which started in 2008.

The so-called Basel 2.5 revisions introduced stressed VaR and IRC for modelled market risk in 2009-10.^[3]

Basel III was initially published in 2010/11, following the 2008 financial crisis. The standards set new definitions of capital, higher capital ratio requirements, and a leverage ratio requirement as a «back stop» measure. Risk-based capital requirements (RWAs) for CVA risk and interest rate risk in the banking book were introduced for the first time, along with a large exposures framework, a revised securitisation framework, and a standardised approach to counterparty credit risk (SA-CCR) to measure exposure to derivative transactions. A specific framework for exposures to central counterparty clearing was introduced.^[4]

The BCBS also published regulatory standards for the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR) and Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR);^[5]

In subsequent years, the Basel Committee updated the standards for market risk, based on a “Fundamental Review of the Trading Book” (FRTB).^[6] In addition, further reforms of the framework were published by the Basel Committee in 2017 under the title Basel III: Finalising post-crisis reforms.^[1] These reforms were sometimes referred to as «Basel IV». However, the secretary general of the Basel Committee said, in a 2016 speech, that he did not believe the changes are substantial enough to warrant that title and the Basel Committee refer to only three Basel Accords.^[7]^[3] These new standards came into effect on 1 January 2023, although national implementation of the standards is generally running behind this schedule and still ongoing.

Criticism

The framework’s approach to risk which is based on risk weights derived from the past was criticised for failing to account for the uncertainty in the future.^[8] A recent OECD study suggest that bank regulation based on the Basel accords encourage unconventional business practices and contributed to or even reinforced adverse systemic shocks that materialised during the 2008 financial crisis. According to the study, capital regulation based on risk-weighted assets encourages innovation designed to circumvent regulatory requirements and shifts banks‘ focus away from their core economic functions. Tighter capital requirements based on risk-weighted assets, introduced in the Basel III, may further contribute to these skewed incentives. New liquidity regulation, notwithstanding its good intentions, is another likely candidate to increase bank incentives to exploit regulation.^[9]

In an October 24, 2020 speech at the Bund Financial Summit in Shanghai, Jack Ma described the Basel Accords as a «club for the elderly.»^[10]^: 50

FROM WIKIPEDIA

Question to Gemini Google: so local countries have their god tier money with the ncb’s and not with the ecb

Yes, you’ve hit on one of the most unique and misunderstood design features of the Eurozone.

Commercial banks do not hold their day-to-day god-tier money (reserves) in accounts at the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt. Instead, they hold them directly with their home National Central Bank (NCB)—like De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) in the Netherlands, the Deutsche Bundesbank in Germany, or the Banque de France.

The Eurozone uses a structural model described as centralized decision-making with decentralized execution.

how much money do ncb’s make for handing out the paper money?

National Central Banks (NCBs) do not make profit by directly charging private banks a processing or transaction fee for handing out paper money. Instead, they earn a substantial income called seigniorage, which is the interest earned on the assets or loans used by commercial banks to pay for that cash. [1]

How They Earn Income from Banknotes

The Loan Setup: When a private commercial bank wants physical euro banknotes, it doesn’t buy them outright. It must buy them using its central bank electronic reserves. To get those reserves, the commercial bank usually borrows money from its NCB. [1, 2, 3]
The Interest Catch: The NCB charges the commercial bank interest on that loan based on the ECB’s official policy interest rates. [1, 2]
The Profit Calculation: The NCB takes that interest income and subtracts the very cheap physical cost of printing and managing the notes. Whatever remains is pure profit. [1, 2]

The Eurosystem Shared Pool Rule

An individual country’s central bank does not get to keep all the cash profits generated within its borders. All seigniorage income from across the Eurozone is pooled together. The money is then split up and redistributed to each NCB based on its country’s «capital key»—which is its share of the EU’s total population and GDP. [1, 2, 3]

Ultimately, this net profit doesn’t stay with the central bankers; the NCBs eventually pay a massive chunk of these profits back to their respective national governments as public revenue. [1, 2]

google gemini

The Hub-and-Spoke System

Think of the Eurozone’s monetary setup like a classic hub-and-spoke network:

The Hub (The ECB): The ECB in Frankfurt is the intellectual and political headquarters. This is where Christine Lagarde and the governors of the local central banks meet to make the rules, set interest rates, and design monetary policy. But the ECB itself maintains very few direct accounts for commercial operational banks.
The Spokes (The NCBs): The local national central banks are the operational workhorses. They do all the heavy lifting and practical banking infrastructure.

Where the Money Lives

Because of this decentralized setup, when a Dutch bank like ABN AMRO or ING holds its god-tier reserves, it interacts exclusively with De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB).

The Reserve Accounts: ABN AMRO’s digital current account is physically hosted on the servers of the DNB.
The Interbank Network: When Dutch banks clear those daily incoming and outgoing payments we talked about, the plumbing runs through local connections that feed into the broader Eurozone TARGET2 settlement system.
The Interest Payments: When the ECB announces it is raising or lowering the Deposit Facility Rate (the interest paid on reserves), it is the local NCB (the DNB) that actually calculates and pays out that interest to the Dutch commercial banks at the end of the maintenance cycle.

Why did Europe build it this way?

When the Euro was created in 1999, countries like Germany, France, and the Netherlands already had massive, highly sophisticated, and trusted central banking infrastructures that had been running smoothly for decades.

Rather than tearing them down and forcing thousands of commercial banks across Europe to open new accounts with a brand-new entity in Frankfurt, it was far more efficient to keep the existing infrastructure. The local central banks were simply linked together under a unified rulebook, collectively forming what is legally called the Eurosystem.

So, your summary is 100% accurate: policy is dictated from Frankfurt, but the actual god-tier liquidity sits locally with the National Central Banks.

when one banks at abn and sends 110 euro’s to someone who banks at the Rabobank, would that actually cost the Abn 110 euro’s? R.J. Baarda

The short answer is no, it does not actually cost ABN AMRO a net loss of €110 in real wealth, even though €110 explicitly leaves their balance sheet.

To understand why, it helps to separate the customer’s money (commercial bank money) from the bank’s money (central bank reserves). Here is exactly what happens behind the scenes when you make that transfer.

1. The Balance Sheet Shift

When you send €110 to someone at Rabobank, ABN AMRO performs a matching dual action:

They reduce their liability to you: They subtract €110 from your personal checking account. Since customer deposits are a liability to a bank (money they owe you), this actually shrinks their liabilities.
They reduce their central bank reserves: To settle the transfer with Rabobank, ABN AMRO must move €110 out of its master account held at the Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank or DNB) via Europe’s interbank settlement system (T2, formerly TARGET2). Those reserves are transferred directly into Rabobank’s central bank account.

So, ABN AMRO’s balance sheet shrinks by €110 on both sides—less money owed to you, and less cash reserves held at the central bank. Their net equity (their baseline wealth/capital) remains entirely unchanged.

2. The Power of «Netting»

If your transfer was the only transaction happening that day, ABN AMRO would indeed have to part with €110 of its liquid central bank reserves. However, banks process millions of transactions a day.

While you are sending €110 from ABN to Rabobank, someone else is likely buying a second-hand bike or paying a bill, sending €100 from Rabobank to ABN.

Instead of moving cash back and forth for every single swipe or click, the banking system uses multilateral netting. At the end of the clearing cycle:

ABN owes Rabobank €110.
Rabobank owes ABN €100.
The actual cost: ABN AMRO only moves a net difference of €10 in central bank reserves to Rabobank to settle both accounts.

3. The Only Real «Cost» to the Bank

If there is no loss of baseline wealth, does the transaction cost the bank anything at all? Only fractions of a cent:

System fees: The Eurosystem charges commercial banks a microscopic infrastructure fee per transaction processed over the T2/TIPS network (usually a tiny fraction of a euro cent).
Operational overhead: The data processing, electricity, and compliance network costs required to log the transfer.

In short, ABN AMRO simply swaps a liability to you for an equal asset transfer to Rabobank. It’s a zero-sum rebalancing of their books, not a €110 drain on their corporate wallet.

so – eurozone- when banks loan, they create money, when a bank transfers that created money to another bank, it costs the bank money, but a bank also receives incoming, and i believe those are all added and substracted, just this last fact, is that another possible benefit for banks

Yes, exactly. You have hit on a crucial concept in banking operations: netting (or netting out) of payments, which is a major operational and financial benefit for banks.

When you look at a single transaction, it seems like a bank loses expensive reserves every time a customer spends money. But because thousands of transactions happen simultaneously across the economy, banks rarely pay for each transfer individually. Instead, they rely on a process that vastly reduces their actual costs.

Here is a step-by-step breakdown of how this works in the Eurozone and why it acts as a massive benefit for commercial banks.

hoeveel geld kost het de abn amro ieder jaar de taak van witwaspreventie en terrorismebestrijding

Het bestrijden van witwassen en terrorismefinanciering (de zogeheten poortwachtersfunctie onder de Wwft) kost ABN AMRO jaarlijks een enorm bedrag. Op het hoogtepunt van de herstelprogramma’s lagen de structurele kosten rond de €465 miljoen per jaar.

Hoewel de bank de afgelopen jaren de grootste achterstanden heeft weggewerkt, blijven de jaarlijkse uitgaven fors. De kosten en de inzet laten zich als volgt samenvatten:

De cijfers op een rij:

Jaarlijkse kosten: Circa €400 tot €465 miljoen. Dit gaat op aan systemen, transactiemonitoring en compliance-personeel.
Personeel: Ruim 2.900 medewerkers (binnen de afdeling Detecting Financial Crime) houden zich fulltime bezig met het screenen van klanten en het opsporen van verdachte transacties. Op het absolute piekmunt (rond 2022/2023) waren dit er zelfs tijdelijk zo’n 4.400.
AI-reductie: De totale bezetting daalt inmiddels licht. Dankzij de inzet van kunstmatige intelligentie (AI) kunnen banken de enorme berg data sneller en met minder handmatig werk analyseren, waardoor de komende jaren naar verwachting zo’n 20% van de handmatige banen op deze afdelingen verdwijnt.

Wie betaalt dit?

De bank draagt het overgrote deel van deze kosten zelf, maar berekent sinds een paar jaar een klein deel door via de banktarieven. Dit merk je onder andere aan de stijgende pakketprijzen voor particulieren, en aan de specifieke maandelijkse kosten klantonderzoek die zakelijke klanten (zoals BV’s of stichtingen, afhankelijk van het risicoprofiel) moeten betalen.

1. How «Netting» Protects Bank Reserves

In the Eurozone, large-scale interbank transfers are processed through systems like TARGET2. If Bank A had to settle every single transfer in real-time with actual central bank reserves, it would need an enormous, highly expensive pool of liquidity.

Instead, banks use clearing houses and automated systems to «net» transactions throughout the day.

Scenario: * Customers at Bank A send a total of €10,000,000 to customers at Bank B. (Potential reserve loss for Bank A: €10M).
- Simultaneously, customers at Bank B send €9,800,000 to customers at Bank A. (Potential reserve gain for Bank A: €9.8M).
The Net Outcome: At the end of the settlement cycle, Bank A does not actually send €10 million. It only owes Bank B the net difference: €200,000.

The Benefit: By netting the inflows and outflows, Bank A only had to move a tiny fraction (2%) of the total transaction volume in actual, costly central bank reserves.

2. Why This is a Massive Advantage for Banks

This daily «adding and subtracting» provides three major benefits that make the business of money creation highly profitable and sustainable:

A. Maximizes the Power of Money Creation

Because outflows are heavily cushioned by incoming flows, banks can confidently create new loans (and thus new deposit money) without worrying that every single euro created will immediately drain their central bank reserves. It allows them to maintain a much higher ratio of profit-generating loans relative to the actual reserves they hold.

B. Drastically Lowers Liquidity Costs

Holding central bank reserves or borrowing them overnight on the interbank market costs money (based on the ECB’s deposit and refinancing rates). Because netting minimizes the volume of reserves that actually need to be shifted around, it dramatically lowers a bank’s daily funding and liquidity management costs.

C. The «Law of Large Numbers»

The larger a bank is, the more its inflows and outflows naturally balance out. If a bank holds a massive market share (like a major national bank in the Netherlands), there is a high statistical probability that when a customer spends money, the recipient also holds an account at that same bank. When that happens, the money never leaves the bank at all; it’s just a internal bookkeeping entry, costing the bank €0 in central bank reserves.

Summary

Your intuition is spot on. The «adding and subtracting» of incoming and outgoing flows means banks operate on a net deficit or surplus basis, rather than a gross transaction basis. This structural feature of the Eurosystem acts as a massive shield, allowing banks to aggressively create credit money while keeping their operational reserve costs remarkably low.

does the ecb directly own gold, or does it have official claims on local central banks gold

The short answer is both, but the vast majority of the gold in the Eurosystem belongs to the local National Central Banks (NCBs) like De Nederlandsche Bank or the Deutsche Bundesbank.

The European Central Bank does directly own a small stash of physical gold, but it also holds a legal claim on the NCBs‘ balance sheets for the assets transferred to it when the Euro was born.

1. The ECB’s Direct Gold Ownership (~500 Tonnes)

When the Eurozone was established, the participating national central banks were required to transfer a chunk of their foreign reserve assets to the newly created ECB to give the new central institution financial backing and credibility.

The 15% Rule: The ECB received roughly €40 billion in initial assets from the local central banks. It was decided that 15% of that initial transfer had to be in physical gold.
Direct Title: The ECB holds direct legal title to this gold (roughly 500 tonnes). It sits straight on the ECB’s own balance sheet.
The Catch: While the ECB owns this gold directly, it doesn’t store it in a vault in Frankfurt. Instead, this gold is physically kept in deep storage at major international hubs like the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Bank of England, and the Banque de France.

2. The Official Claims on Local Central Banks

The 500 tonnes owned directly by the ECB is just a drop in the bucket compared to Europe’s total gold reserves. The overwhelming bulk of Europe’s gold—thousands of tonnes—remains the direct property of the local national central banks.

To balance the scales when those initial assets were handed over to Frankfurt, a legal accounting mechanism was created:

The Credit Entry: When an NCB (like De Nederlandsche Bank) shipped gold or foreign currencies to the ECB, it didn’t give it away as a donation. The NCB recorded a large, permanent claim against the ECB on its own national ledger.
The ECB’s Mirror Liability: On the flip side, the ECB’s balance sheet reflects a corresponding liability—essentially an official, legal obligation to the NCBs for the pooling of those reserves.

Who Really Controls the Vaults?

If you aggregate all the gold across the Eurosystem, it represents one of the largest economic blocks of gold bullion in the world. However, the legal reality looks like this:

Institution	Gold Ownership Model	Operational Reality
The ECB	Directly owns ~500 tonnes.	Manages it as part of its own foreign reserves portfolio to maintain market liquidity and financial stability.
Local NCBs (e.g., DNB, Bundesbank)	Directly own ~10,000+ combined tonnes.	The gold is fully recorded on the national balance sheets. The local nations retain ultimate sovereignty over their physical gold reserves.

The Eurosystem structure deliberately keeps the physical wealth decentralized. The ECB acts as the central coordinator of monetary policy, but the hard, tangible assets backing the credibility of the entire system are mostly left right where they started: inside the sovereign ledgers of the member states.does the nederlandsche bank have its own interbank ledgers

Yes, De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) maintains its own interbank ledgers, but it does so as an integrated component of the Eurosystem’s unified technical infrastructure.

While DNB is the legal entity that opens, manages, and owns the accounts for Dutch banks, the underlying ledger technology is fully standardized across the Eurozone. Google Gemini with R.J. Baarda. stored on baarda.ch

How DNB’s Ledgers Work: The TARGET Structure

Legally and operationally, DNB runs a specific national segment of the Eurozone’s wholesale payment architecture known as TARGET-NL.

When a starting bank opens a central bank reserve account in the Netherlands, it interacts with DNB through a multi-tiered ledger system that is split into distinct functional accounts:

[ Your Commercial Bank Treasury ]
               │
               ▼  (Connected via SWIFT / ISO 20022)
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                      TARGET-NL                         │
│   (DNB-Administered Central Bank Reserve Ledgers)      │
│                                                        │
│  ┌──────────────────────────┐┌──────────────────────┐  │
│  │ Central Liquidity Mgmt   ││ RTGS Accounts        │  │
│  │ (CLM - Main Cash Account)││ (Real-Time Gross    │  │
│  │  ↳ Holds reserve buffer  ││  Settlement Ledger) │  │
│  │  ↳ Interacts with DNB    ││  ↳ Large interbank  │  │
│  └──────────────────────────┘│    payments          │  │
│                              └──────────────────────┘  │
│  ┌──────────────────────────┐┌──────────────────────┐  │
│  │ TIPS Accounts            ││ T2S Ledgers          │  │
│  │ (Instant retail ledger)  ││ (Securities cash    │  │
│  │  ↳ 24/7/365 settlement   ││  settlement)        │  │
│  └──────────────────────────┘└──────────────────────┘  │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

1. Central Liquidity Management (CLM) Ledger

This is the core ledger where your Main Cash Account (MCA) sits. DNB uses this ledger to monitor your regulatory compliance, such as your minimum reserve obligations. If your bank borrows funds from DNB during regular monetary policy operations, the credit is logged right here.

2. Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) Ledger

When your bank needs to settle a multi-million euro transaction with another institution (like ING or ABN Amro), the instruction goes through the RTGS ledger. Every transaction processed here is executed instantly, individually, and irrevocably in central bank money.

3. TIPS Ledger (TARGET Instant Payment Settlement)

For everyday retail payments, DNB hooks into the TIPS ledger. This is a specialized, 24/7/365 instant ledger that processes peer-to-peer and customer transfers within seconds.

The Legal «Firewall»

Even though the software platform is shared at the European level, DNB remains the sole legal gatekeeper of its local ledgers.

Under Dutch law (specifically Article 212a of the Faillissementswet or Dutch Bankruptcy Act), TARGET-NL is legally designated as a protected settlement system.

This means that if a bank on DNB’s ledger faces insolvency, the transactions already queued or processed in the ledger cannot be retroactively unwound by a bankruptcy trustee. This legal shielding is exactly what prevents systemic chain reactions in the financial sector, ensuring that «God-tier» money remains completely safe.

Behoren incasso regels en wetgeving tot het Eurosystem.

Ledger with the ECB concerning moneytransfers between banks

Possible percentage state owned

AT THE NOZZLE (where newly created money is) slightly dilutes money aggrigate

An ISO currency code is a standard three-letter code used to identify global currencies. Established by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), these codes prevent confusion when dealing with international money, as many different countries use similar-sounding names (like «Dollars» or «Francs»). [1, 2]

How They Work (The ISO 4217 Standard)

Alphabetic Code: Every code has three letters. The first two letters usually represent the country, and the third represents the name of the currency.
- Example: USD stands for United States Dollar. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Numeric Code: Every currency also has a three-digit number, which is used in computer systems that do not use the English alphabet.
- Example: EUR (Euro) has the numeric code 978. [1, 2]

Common Examples

These are the most common ISO codes you will see when traveling or exchanging money online: [1]

EUR: Euro (used in the Netherlands)
USD: United States Dollar
GBP: British Pound Sterling
JPY: Japanese Yen [1, 2, 3, 4]

This is an article/page I am working on. It goes into general details about the Dutch/Eurozone banking ways. Probably a lot of the explanation will come from Google Gemini. Thank you.

Introduction:

My question to Gemini Google:

Hi Gem, could you briefly explain how a bank in the Eurosystem creates money when someone takes a loan, while also mentioning that if the created money goes to another bank, it costs the original bank money. Answer:

When you take out a loan in the Eurosystem, the bank doesn’t hand over cash from a vault or transfer money from someone else’s savings account. Instead, it creates new deposit money out of thin air through commercial bank lending.

Here is exactly how that works, and why moving that money can cost the originating bank.

1. Money Creation via Ledger Entries

When a bank approves a loan (for example, €10,000), it simultaneously creates two entries on its balance sheet:

Asset: The bank creates a loan agreement, which is a claim on you to pay them back with interest.
Liability: The bank credits your current account with €10,000.

At this precise moment, new electronic money is created. This is called commercial bank money (or deposit money), and it expands the total money supply (M1) in the economy.

[Bank Balance Sheet]
Assets:                   Liabilities:
+ €10,000 (Your Loan)     + €10,000 (Your Deposit)

2. The Cost of Outflow: Transferring to Another Bank

The newly created money exists peacefully on the bank’s ledger—until you actually spend it.

If you use that €10,000 to buy something and the seller uses a different bank, your bank has to transfer those funds out. Commercial banks cannot settle debts with each other using their own commercial bank money. They must settle using central bank reserves (money held on deposit at the Central Bank, like the DNB or ECB).

When the money leaves:

The original bank loses the deposit (its liability decreases).
The original bank must transfer an equivalent amount of central bank reserves to the receiving bank (its assets decrease).

Why this costs the bank money:

Loss of Liquidity: Central bank reserves are a bank’s most liquid and valuable asset. Losing them limits their capacity to fund other operations.
Funding Costs: If the bank runs low on central bank reserves because too much money is flowing out, it cannot just «create» more reserves. It has to borrow them. It must either:
- Borrow reserves from other banks on the interbank market.
- Borrow reserves directly from the Eurosystem via the ECB’s refinancing operations.

In both cases, the bank has to pay the prevailing interest rate (such as the Euro Short-Term Rate, €STR, or the ECB’s main refinancing rate) to maintain its required reserve levels. Therefore, while creating the loan was practically free, holding onto or funding that money once it leaves the bank carries a very real financial cost.

Question to Gemini from me: Thank you. Could you do a full explanation on the interbank market (in the Eurosystem)

The interbank market is the financial plumbing of the Eurosystem. It is where commercial banks lend money—specifically central bank reserves—to one another, usually for very short durations ranging from overnight to a few weeks.

While banks create commercial bank money for the public, they rely on the interbank market to manage the central bank money needed to settle balances with each other and meet regulatory requirements.

Here is a full breakdown of how the Eurosystem interbank market operates, how the European Central Bank (ECB) controls it, and what happens when it breaks down.

1. Why Do Banks Need the Interbank Market?

Every day, millions of transactions occur across the Eurozone. When a customer at Bank A buys a product from a vendor at Bank B, Bank A must transfer central bank reserves to Bank B to settle the transaction.

By the end of the business day, this constant shifting of funds creates imbalances:

Surplus Banks: Some banks end up with more reserves than they strictly need.
Deficit Banks: Other banks end up with a shortage of reserves due to heavy customer outflows or loans.

Instead of leaving surplus reserves sitting idle or letting deficit banks fall short, banks use the interbank market to lend to one another. A surplus bank lends its excess reserves to a deficit bank overnight, earning a small amount of interest.

2. The Anchor: The ECB Interest Rate Corridor

Commercial banks don’t trade in a vacuum; the ECB sets the boundaries for the interbank market using its three main policy rates. This structure is known as the interest rate corridor.

The Deposit Facility Rate (DFR): This is the interest rate banks receive when they deposit excess reserves overnight with the ECB. This forms the absolute floor of the interbank market, because no bank will lend to another bank for less than it can safely earn at the central bank.
The Main Refinancing Operations (MRO) Rate: This is the rate banks pay when they borrow liquidity from the ECB for a one-week period, providing collateral.
The Marginal Lending Facility Rate: This is the rate banks pay to borrow overnight liquidity from the ECB in an emergency. This forms the ceiling of the interbank market, because no bank will pay another bank a higher rate than what the ECB charges.

The Target: €STR (Euro Short-Term Rate)

The actual, real-world benchmark rate for overnight unsecured lending between banks in the Eurozone is called €STR. It reflects the wholesale overnight borrowing costs of Eurozone banks and typically floats very close to the ECB’s Deposit Facility Rate.

3. Secured vs. Unsecured Interbank Lending

The interbank market is broadly divided into two segments based on risk management:

Feature	Unsecured Market (€STR)	Secured Market (Repo Market)
How it works	A bank lends reserves purely based on the creditworthiness of the borrowing bank. No collateral is exchanged.	A bank lends reserves, but the borrowing bank provides high-quality assets (like government bonds) as collateral.
Risk Profile	Higher risk. If the borrowing bank defaults, the lender loses the money.	Lower risk. If the borrower defaults, the lender keeps and sells the bonds.
Prevalence	Less dominant today for large volumes, used mostly for fine-tuning.	The dominant market. Most interbank trading happens via Repurchase Agreements (Repos).

4. Structural Shift: From Scarcity to Abundance

The way the Eurosystem interbank market operates has fundamentally shifted over the last two decades due to central bank policies.

The Pre-2008 Model (Scarcity)

Before the financial crisis, the ECB kept reserves scarce. It provided just enough liquidity to the banking system to meet reserve requirements. Because reserves were scarce, banks actively traded with each other every single night to balance their books. The interbank interest rate fluctuated dynamically in the middle of the ECB’s corridor.

The Post-Crisis / Current Model (Abundance)

Following years of Quantitative Easing (QE) and targeted long-term loans (TLTROs), the ECB flooded the banking system with trillions of Euros in excess reserves.

Because almost every major bank now sits on a massive surplus of reserves, the traditional need for deficit banks to borrow from surplus banks has dramatically shrunk. Instead of trading actively with each other, banks simply leave their massive excess cash parked at the ECB to safely earn the Deposit Facility Rate (DFR). As a result, market rates like €STR stay firmly pinned to the ECB’s floor.

5. What Happens When the Interbank Market Freezes?

The interbank market relies entirely on trust. Because banks have the most intimate knowledge of the financial system, they are the first to know if a competitor is in trouble.

During a banking crisis (such as in 2008 or during the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis), trust evaporates.

Hoarding Reserves: Surplus banks worry that if they lend their reserves overnight, the borrowing bank might collapse before morning. They choose to hoard their reserves or park them safely at the ECB, even if the yield is low.
The Liquidity Crunch: Deficit banks—even perfectly healthy ones—suddenly find themselves unable to borrow the reserves they need to settle daily transactions.

When the interbank market freezes, the ECB must step in as the «Lender of Last Resort.» The central bank bypasses the broken interbank market by directly providing unlimited liquidity to any solvent bank that needs it, preventing a systemic collapse of the Eurosystem’s payment mechanics.

Hypotheekrente aftrek (could be seen as sort of a subsidy for banks)
Uit Wikipedia, de vrije encyclopedie
Hypotheekrenteaftrek is een aftrekpost voor de bezitters van een eigen woning, die ter financiering van die woning een lening hebben afgesloten, waarop ze rente betalen.
Het is een regeling in de Nederlandse Wet inkomstenbelasting 2001 waarmee de rente (en kosten) van een schuld aangegaan voor aankoop van de eigen woning kan worden afgetrokken van het inkomen in box 1, voordat over dit inkomen belasting wordt berekend. De rente wordt dus aan de schuldeiser betaald, terwijl de belasting die de schuldenaar over diens gehele inkomen moet betalen dankzij de regeling van de hypotheekrenteaftrek minder hoog is.
In een wettelijk kader is dit als volgt vastgegelegd in Artikel 3.120, lid 1, Wet IB 2001, Aftrekbare kosten eigen woning:
«De aftrekbare kosten met betrekking tot een eigen woning zijn het gezamenlijke bedrag van:
a. de renten van schulden die behoren tot de eigenwoningschuld;
b. de kosten van geldleningen die behoren tot de eigenwoningschuld;
c. de periodieke betalingen op grond van de rechten van erfpacht, opstal en beklemming, met betrekking tot de eigen woning.
De lening is meestal een hypothecaire lening, maar dit maakt voor de renteaftrek niet uit, men kan bijv. ook onderhands van familie lenen of van de eigen BV.»
De Wet herziening fiscale behandeling eigen woning, ingegaan in 2013, bepaalt dat voor nieuwe hypotheken de betaalde rente alleen aftrekbaar is als het een lening betreft die gedurende de looptijd volledig en ten minste annuïtair wordt afgelost. Dit is met name het geval bij de lineaire lening en de annuïteitenlening.
Men kan wel binnen grenzen per saldo langzamer en/of onvolledig aflossen door een deel van de maandlasten ook weer te lenen, maar dan zonder extra hypotheekrenteaftrek.
Hi Gem, you know Hypotheekrenteaftrek in the Netherlands? Are there more European countries that have that? And do you think it could sort of even be seen as a kind of subsidy for Dutch banks.

Yes, hypotheekrenteaftrek (mortgage interest deduction) is a well-known concept, and its impact on the housing market is a frequent topic of debate.

1. Other European Countries with Similar Systems
The short answer is: very few, and those that still have it are phasing it out.
Historically, many European countries used mortgage tax deductions to stimulate homeownership after World War II. However, over the last few decades, most have abandoned or heavily restricted it because it distorts housing prices and heavily burdens state budgets.
The current landscape across Europe looks like this:
Switzerland: Switzerland is one of the few European countries where mortgage interest remains fully deductible. However, there is a catch: Swiss homeowners must also pay tax on an imputed rental value (Eigenmietwert / valeur locative), which treats the home as a source of income.

Sweden: Sweden allows individuals to deduct 30% of their net interest costs from their taxes (dropping to 21% for amounts exceeding 100,000 SEK). This applies to all consumer debt, including mortgages, though there are ongoing discussions about phasing it out.

Denmark: Denmark allows a deduction, but it has been systematically reduced over the years. Currently, it hovers around 33.5%.

Belgium: Belgium historically had the woonbonus, but regional governments have largely abolished it for new mortgages (Flanders eliminated it in 2020, and other regions followed).

The Rest of Europe: Large economies like Germany, France, and the UK do not allow mortgage interest deductions for primary residences at all.
Even in the Netherlands, the maximum deduction rate has been phased down and is capped at 37.56%.

2. Is it a Subsidy for Dutch Banks?
Your intuition here aligns exactly with mainstream economic theory and academic literature. Many economists argue that hypotheekrenteaftrek acts as an indirect, structural subsidy for commercial banks.
While the tax break is legally given to the homebuyer, the economic benefit shifts directly to the financial sector through two main mechanisms:
Capitalization into Higher Prices
Because the government covers a portion of the interest expense, buyers calculate their monthly net costs based on that discount. This increases their borrowing capacity. In a tight housing market with highly inelastic supply, this extra purchasing power is simply bid into the price of the home.
GOOGLE GEMINI

Economists refer to this as the tax benefit being capitalized into land values. The buyer doesn’t get a cheaper monthly payment; they just get a larger loan.
Artificially High Loan-to-Value (LTV) Ratios
Because consumers can borrow more money to chase the same houses, the total volume of mortgage debt in the Netherlands is exceptionally high relative to GDP. Dutch banks hold massive mortgage portfolios.
More Debt = More Interest Income: Banks generate profit from the spread on interest. By artificially inflating the size of the average mortgage, the system ensures that the absolute volume of money being borrowed—and therefore the total interest paid to banks over 30 years—is significantly higher.
Mitigated Default Risk: For decades, this system incentivized interest-only mortgages (aflossingsvrij), where borrowers only paid interest to maximize the tax deduction, leaving the principal untouched. This kept people in debt longer, ensuring a steady, long-term revenue stream for the banks.
So, while the policy is framed as a benefit for «the hard-working homeowner,» the reality is that the state budget effectively subsidizes the capacity of citizens to take on massive debt, with the interest margins on that expanded debt flowing straight into the banking sector’s balance sheets.

ISO 20022 is een wereldwijde standaard voor het uitwisselen van elektronische gegevens tussen financiële instellingen. Het vervangt oude systemen, zoals de oude SWIFT-berichten. Het grote voordeel? Transacties bevatten veel meer en beter gestructureerde data. Dit zorgt voor snellere betalingen en minder fouten. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Hoe werkt het?
Zie het als een universele taal. Vroeger spraken banken allemaal een ander dialect. Ze begrepen elkaar soms niet goed. Met ISO 20022 gebruikt iedereen precies dezelfde woordenboek (XML-formaat). Zowel de verzender als de ontvanger weet hierdoor exact wat elk stukje data betekent. [1]

Waarom is het belangrijk?

Meer informatie: Je kunt tot op detailniveau zien waar een betaling vandaan komt en wat het doel is.
Minder fraude: Systemen kunnen sneller controleren of alles veilig en legaal is.
Automatisering: Bedrijven kunnen administratie veel makkelijker en automatisch verwerken. [1, 2]

Je kunt er meer over lezen op de Betaalvereniging Nederland of de website van SWIFT.

Ideal/wero. From Google AI:
iDEAL | Wero is the official, unified European digital payment solution created by the European Payments Initiative (EPI). It is the successor to the Netherlands‘ popular iDEAL payment system. It enables fast, secure, and direct bank-to-bank transactions across multiple European countries. [1, 2, 3]
The transition is well underway. Between 2026 and 2027, the traditional iDEAL is being rebranded and replaced by iDEAL | Wero across banking apps, webshops, and physical checkouts. [1, 2]
Core Features of Wero
Cross-Border Payments: Allows users to easily transfer money or pay online across European nations (such as Germany, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands).
Digital Wallet & P2P: Includes peer-to-peer (P2P) transfers directly through mobile banking apps.
Purchase Protection: Offers added consumer protection against fraud and scams when shopping online.
Future Functionalities: Eventually aims to cover recurring subscription payments, in-store transactions, and pay-on-delivery services. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
Why the Change?
Europe currently uses a fragmented landscape of different domestic payment systems. Wero aims to consolidate these into a single, seamless European payment standard designed to compete with large non-European players (like PayPal or Apple Pay). [1, 2, 3, 4]
Transition Timeline
2026: Users will notice the co-branded «iDEAL | Wero» logo in their apps and checkout pages. The core user experience remains identical to iDEAL. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Late 2026 to 2027: New Wero-specific features, such as purchase protection, will roll out and the original iDEAL brand will gradually be phased out entirely. [1, 2]
For official updates and details regarding your bank, you can visit the iDEAL Wero Information Page. [1, 2]
Geldmaat
Deposito garantie stelsel. Namens De Nederlandsche Bank:
Uw geld op rekeningen bij Nederlandse banken wordt wettelijk beschermd door de Nederlandse Depositogarantie. Mocht een bank failliet gaan, dan zorgt De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) dat u uw geld terugkrijgt. Van 1 cent tot maximaal € 100.000 per persoon, per bank. Gegarandeerd.
WIKIPEDIA on DEPOSITOGARANTIESTELSEL:
Depositogarantiestelsel

Artikel
Overleg
Lezen
Bewerken
Brontekst bewerken
Geschiedenis

Hulpmiddelen

Uiterlijk
Tekst

Klein

Standaard

Groot
Paginabreedte

Standaard

Volle breedte
Kleur (bèta)

Automatisch

Licht

Donker

Uit Wikipedia, de vrije encyclopedie

Logo voor het Nederlandse depositogarantiestelsel dat gebruikt wordt in campagnes van De Nederlandsche Bank.
Een depositogarantiestelsel (DGS), kortweg de depositogarantie, biedt een bepaalde bescherming voor de tegoeden van de rekeninghouders als een bank failliet gaat. Alle lidstaten van de Europese Unie hebben op de een of andere manier een depositogarantiestelsel, om te voldoen aan Europese richtlijnen.^[1]
Het Nederlandse depositogarantiestelsel is geregeld in de Wet op het financieel toezicht, die op 1 januari 2007 van kracht werd, en het Besluit bijzondere prudentiële maatregelen, beleggerscompensatie en depositogarantie Wft, § 6.4^[2]. In België is een soortgelijke regeling van toepassing. Deze regeling wordt uitgevoerd door het Beschermingsfonds voor deposito’s en financiële instrumenten.^[3]
Europese rol
Binnen Europa zijn nationale depositogarantiestelsels de afgelopen jaren steeds verder op elkaar afgestemd om regelgevende concurrentie en concurrentievervalsing tegen te gaan. Sinds eind 2010 is het dekkingsniveau voor de gehele Europese Unie vastgesteld op € 100.000. Elk land moet die garantie zelf kunnen waarmaken. Verder is de uitbetalingstermijn aan depositohouders verkort van drie maanden naar maximaal 20 werkdagen.
Doel
De reden dat het stelsel van toepassing is op banken is dat deze kunnen worden geconfronteerd met een snelle opname van tegoeden (bankrun). Het doel van het stelsel is hierbij tweeledig:
het voorkomen dat een bankrun optreedt en
het beschermen van houders met een relatief klein deposito indien een bank failleert.
Het depositogarantiestelsel is niet van toepassing op verzekeraars, dus het beschermt geen «spaartegoeden» in de vorm van kapitaalverzekeringen, lijfrenten, pensioenen, en dergelijke, omdat een situatie als bovengenoemd bij een verzekeraar niet in dezelfde mate kan optreden, aangezien bij verzekeraars meestal sprake is van langlopende wederzijdse verplichtingen. Het is wel van toepassing op tegoeden in het kader van banksparen.
Situatie in Nederland
Voor volledige zekerheid mag het tegoed, inclusief de bijgeschreven rente en de opgebouwde, maar nog niet bijgeschreven rente, niet meer dan €100.000 zijn.
Geschiedenis
De Nederlandse Wet op het financieel toezicht werd van kracht op 1 januari 2007. Daarmee verviel de Collectieve Garantieregeling (met een dekking van € 20.000) en het Besluit van 12 oktober 2006, houdende regels met betrekking tot verscheidene bijzondere prudentiële maatregelen, het beleggerscompensatie- en het depositogarantiestelsel op grond van de Wet op het financieel toezicht (Besluit bijzondere prudentiële maatregelen, beleggerscompensatie en depositogarantie Wft).
Sinds het in werking treden van de Wet op het financieel toezicht (1 januari 2007) is de bescherming als volgt geregeld:
Tot oktober 2008: De eerste € 20.000 was voor 100% gegarandeerd,
de volgende € 20.000 voor 90%;
effectief betekent dit bij een tegoed boven € 20.000 dat € 38.000 was gegarandeerd.
Met ingang van oktober 2008 (tijdelijk): De eerste € 100.000 is voor 100% gegarandeerd.
Deze regeling was in beginsel tijdelijk^[4] maar werd – in afwachting van een Europees garantiestelsel – verlengd tot 31 december 2010.^[5]
De regeling is verlengd tot 1 juli 2013, daarna zal alleen de financiering anders zijn.
Financiering (Nederland)
Ex post
In beginsel betalen de andere banken gezamenlijk het stelsel. Wanneer De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) het depositogarantiestelsel in werking stelt, keert DNB die vergoedingen uit aan de depositohouders. Vervolgens worden deze vergoedingen omgeslagen over de overige deelnemende banken. Hiermee wordt het depositogarantiestelsel ex post gefinancierd: eerst na de inwerkingstelling van het depositogarantiestelsel wordt van de overige banken verlangd dat zij een bedrag betalen aan DNB.^[6]
Bij een faillissement van een van de grootste banken (een systeembank) zouden de bijdragen van de overige banken voor hen te zwaar te zijn. De overheid probeert mede daarom zo’n faillissement te voorkomen.
Ex ante
Op 30 maart 2012 heeft het Ministerie van Financiën een voorstel ingediend het garantiestelsel zodanig te hervormen dat het stelsel ex ante gefinancierd wordt,^[6] waarbij de bijdrages mede afhankelijk zijn van het risicoprofiel van de banken. De invoering is uitgesteld tot 1 juli 2013. Banken die dan een Nederlandse bankvergunning hebben betalen vanaf die datum bijdragen aan het depositogarantiefonds. Zij bouwen in beginsel in vijftien jaar tijd een fonds op met een omvang van 1% van de gedekte deposito’s.^[6] Dit fonds wordt beheerd door een stichting met de naam Stichting depositogarantiefonds. Ultimo september 2009 werd ongeveer € 390 miljard aan deposito’s gedekt door het depositogarantiestelsel, dit impliceert een fonds van circa € 4 miljard.^[6] Ex ante financiering heeft een aantal voordelen^[6]:
De uiteindelijk faillerende bank betaalt mee aan het depositogarantiestelsel, iets dat onmogelijk is onder ex post financiering.
De geloofwaardigheid voor de depositohouders wordt bevorderd: zij weten dat er daadwerkelijk geld wordt gespaard, zodat er meer zekerheid bestaat dat zij een vergoeding ontvangen.
Het helpt in het spreiden van de kosten van het depositogarantiestelsel over de tijd; banken behoeven minder te betalen op het moment dat een bank daadwerkelijk failliet gaat.
Het is effectiever om risicogedifferentieerde premies te hanteren, omdat zij vooraf al een sturende werking hebben.
Met betrekking tot het laatste punt worden de banken op basis van vier indicatoren ingedeeld in een risicocategorie. Afhankelijk van de uitkomst betaalt een bank een risico-opslag van 0%, 25%, 50% of 100% van het basisbedrag.^[7] Een bank wordt door DNB in een risicocategorie ingedeeld door een gewogen gemiddelde te berekenen van de volgende vier indicatoren: de risicogewogen activa gedeeld door de totale activa (gewicht: 50%), de totale activa gedeeld door het Tier 1-kapitaal (25%), totale liquiditeit gedeeld door de totale activa (12,5%) en de totale liquiditeit gedeeld door de niet-gedekte deposito’s (12,5%).^[7] Deze som is de risicoscore op basis waarvan DNB een bank in een risicocategorie indeelt. De individuele scores per bank zullen overigens niet bekend worden gemaakt.
De banken betalen al mee aan de vorming van de fonds. Per medio 2024 moet het fonds de voorgeschreven omvang bereiken, namelijk 0,8% van de gegarandeerde deposito’s in Nederland ofwel een bedrag van ongeveer € 5 miljard. Mocht het komen tot een uitkering ten laste van het fonds dan is een aanvulling noodzakelijk. Dit kan door betalingen uit de boedel van de failliete bank en door bijdragen van de banken.
De middelen in het depositogarantiefonds worden zeer veilig belegd, tegen een laag krediet-, rente-, en operationeel risico, zonder valutarisico en met hoge liquiditeit.^[7] Hierbij valt te denken aan tegoeden bij DNB en waardepapieren, luidende in euro, uitgegeven door een lidstaat van het eurogebied, met een looptijd of resterende looptijd van ten hoogste twee jaar en die snel verkocht kunnen worden.^[7] Aandelen behoren niet tot deze groep van waardepapieren.
Tijdens de behandeling werd nog geïnformeerd naar de mogelijkheid een maximale dekking van € 100.000 te halveren.^[7] Deze dekking is binnen EU verband vastgelegd en lidstaten kunnen daar niet van afwijken. Uit onderzoek van 2007 blijkt dat bij een dekking van € 50.000 87% van de depositos in Nederland volledig is gedekt en dat stijgt naar 94% bij een dekking van € 100.000.^[7]
Beschermde personen en instellingen
Het depositogarantiestelsel beschermt naast natuurlijke personen ook rechtspersonen, maar per rechtspersoon voor geen hoger maximum dan per natuurlijk persoon (zie boven).^[8] Het stelsel beschermt ook Nederlanders en buitenlanders die bij een buitenlandse vestiging van een Nederlandse bank een tegoed hebben.^[9]
Tegoeden
Het gaat om tegoeden op betaal- en spaarrekeningen, en die in de vorm van obligaties op naam,^[10] inclusief de nog niet bijgeschreven rente tot het moment waarop de bank niet meer aan zijn verplichtingen kan voldoen. ^[11]
Er wordt geen rente vergoed vanaf dat moment tot het moment van uitkering.
Het depositogarantiestelsel is onder meer niet van toepassing op:
deposito’s van depositohouders die zich niet hebben geïdentificeerd overeenkomstig artikel 4, eerste lid, van de Wet ter voorkoming van witwassen en financieren van terrorisme
instrumenten die vallen onder de definitie van eigen vermogen in de zin van de verordening kapitaalvereisten^[12]
Achtergestelde deposito’s vallen daarom in het algemeen niet onder het depositogarantiestelsel. Echter, in het geval van DSB Bank heeft het College van Beroep voor het bedrijfsleven anders beslist: de achtergestelde deposito’s van DSB vallen er wel onder, omdat ze in enkele bijzondere gevallen buiten het geval van liquidatie van de bank vervroegd opeisbaar waren, en om die reden niet mochten worden beschouwd als behorend tot het garantievermogen van de bank. Dit wordt niet anders indien de bank bij het aanbieden van de deposito’s de klanten erop gewezen heeft dat ze niet onder het depositogarantiestelsel zouden vallen, en ook niet door het feit dat DNB ze destijds gekwalificeerd heeft als lager aanvullend (“Lower Tier 2”) vermogen.^[13][14]
Schulden (van de klant) worden zo veel mogelijk verrekend met deze tegoeden. Resteert een tegoed dan wordt de vergoeding daarop gebaseerd.
Deze bedragen gelden per (rechts)persoon, voor alle bankrekeningen tezamen die iemand bij alle betreffende banken heeft die onder dezelfde vergunning vallen. Sommige banken zijn een dochter van een andere bank. De dochterbank kan een eigen vergunning hebben, maar de dochter kan ook gebruikmaken van de vergunning van de moederbank (voorbeeld MoneYou, dochter van de ABN AMRO). Als men zijn spaargeld verdeelt over meerdere bankrekeningen bij verschillende banken met verschillende bankvergunningen (bijvoorbeeld om per bankvergunning niet boven het gegarandeerde maximum uit te komen of om te voorkomen dat men, indien een bank omvalt, tijdelijk niet bij het hele spaartegoed kan) kan men bij fusie van deze banken hier toch boven komen. Dit knelt vooral als het geld niet vrij opneembaar is. De actuele lijst van banken met eigen vergunning is te raadplegen op de website van de Autoriteit Financiële Markten.
Procedure
Wanneer een in Nederland gevestigde bank failliet gaat, zal DNB via de grote dagbladen rekeninghouders oproepen een verzoek tot terugbetalen in te dienen. Dit moeten de rekeninghouders binnen vijf maanden na publicatie doen. Binnen 15 werkdagen na de openstelling van het garantiestelsel, alleen in uitzonderlijke gevallen eenmalig te verlengen met maximaal 10 werkdagen, krijgen de rekeninghouders in principe hun geld terug bij banken die volledig onder het Nederlandse garantiestelsel vallen.^[15]
Financiële instellingen
De regeling is van toepassing als een onderneming is opgenomen in het register «Kredietinstellingen en financiële instellingen» dat uit hoofde van de Wft door De Nederlandsche Bank wordt bijgehouden.^[16]
Onder het Nederlandse depositogarantiestelsel vallen in Nederland gevestigde instellingen in dit register waarbij onder «Financiële dienst» een van de volgende formuleringen staat:
‚Uitoefenen van het bedrijf van bank met beleggingsdiensten (2:13 lid 1)‘
‚Uitoefenen van het bedrijf van bank of elektronisch geldinstelling (2:12 lid 1)‘
Indien in dit register is vermeld dat een (Nederlandse) bank een vergunning heeft op grond van artikel 2:11 van de Wft, dan is het depositogarantiestelsel in beginsel van toepassing op deze bank. Heeft een rekeninghouder een betaal- of spaarrekening bij een Nederlands bijkantoor van een bank die is gevestigd in een andere lidstaat van de Europese Economische Ruimte (EER) of bij een bank die is gevestigd in een land buiten de EER, dan is het Nederlandse garantiestelsel niet van toepassing maar het garantiestelsel van de lidstaat waar die bank is gevestigd. Binnen de EU is het minimale garantiebedrag € 100.000.^[17]
Er zijn banken met verschillende handelsnamen. Banktegoeden bij die handelsnamen vallen dan onder hetzelfde garantiebedrag.
De Nederlandse banken waar particulieren kunnen sparen zijn (met tussen haakjes voorbeelden van andere handelsnamen):
ABN AMRO Bank N.V. (ook ABN AMRO MeesPierson)
Achmea Bank N.V. (ook Centraal Beheer)
Aegon Bank N.V. (ook KNAB en Spaarbeleg), dit wordt ASR Nederland, die de Nederlandse activiteiten van AEGON overneemt
Anadolubank Nederland N.V.
ASN Bank, voorheen de Volksbank N.V. (SNS, RegioBank)
Ayvens Bank N.V., voorheen LeasePlan Corporation N.V. (LeasePlan Bank)
Brand New Day Bank N.V.
bunq B.V.
Cooperatieve Rabobank U.A.
Demir-Halk Bank (Nederland) N.V.
GarantiBank International N.V.
ING Bank N.V.
Nationale-Nederlanden Bank N.V.
Nexent Bank N.V., voorheen Credit Europe Bank
NIBC Bank N.V. Naar verwachting wordt deze in 2026 een onderdeel van ABN AMRO
Triodos Bank N.V.
Van Lanschot Kempen Wealth Management N.V.
Yapi Kredi Bank Nederland N.V.
en de groenbank:
Rabo Groen Bank B.V.
Gelddeel van een beleggingsrekening
Het depositogarantiestelsel geldt ook voor het gelddeel van een beleggingsrekening bij een bank. Bij andere beleggingsrekeningen wordt het gelddeel soms ondergebracht bij een bank:
Beleggingsonderneming BUX: geld dat overgemaakt wordt naar BUX wordt binnen 3 dagen ondergebracht bij ABN AMRO Clearing Bank N.V., die een eigen bankvergunning heeft. Het geld in transit valt echter niet onder het depositogarantiestelsel.^[18]
DEGIRO brengt het gelddeel onder bij de Duitse bank Flatexdegiro Bank AG, waardoor dat valt onder het Duitse depositogarantiestelsel.
Bankfusie
Als twee banken fuseren kunnen klanten gedurende drie maanden het gezamenlijke depositotegoed boven €100.000 inclusief nog niet bijgeschreven rente vervroegd opnemen zonder boete.^[19]
Kritiek
De econoom Wim van den Goorbergh heeft erop gewezen dat het niet nodig is vele miljarden over te hevelen naar een extern fonds en dat dit ook ongewenst is in een tijd waarin verhoging van de solvabiliteit van banken geboden is. De verandering van risicocategorie door DNB zal niet verborgen blijven en daarmede de bank in problemen kunnen brengen.^[20] Ook de Rabobank heeft kritiek op het stelsel, aangezien hierdoor banken die een hoge spaarrente aanbieden de daarbij horende risico’s afwentelen op andere banken en hun klanten. Ook bestaat het gevaar dat het faillissement van een grote bank de andere banken zoveel kost dat sommige daarvan ook failliet gaan. Een van de voorgestelde remedies is de oprichting van een fonds waaraan banken of hun klanten moeten bijdragen, en wel meer naarmate de kredietwaardigheid van de bank lager is.
De commissie-De Wit heeft begrip voor de verhoging van het garantiebedrag van het Nederlandse depositogarantiestelsel naar € 100.000 in «crisistijd». Echter, onder normale omstandigheden acht de commissie een dekking van € 100.000 een te hoog bedrag en raadt daarom aan om de dekking in Europees verband omlaag te brengen naar circa € 50.000.^[21]
Faillissementen van banken
Sinds 1945:
Amsterdam Trade Bank (ATB; 2022) – Depositogarantiestelsel (€ 100.000)
DSB Bank (2009) – Depositogarantiestelsel (€ 100.000)
Landsbanki/Icesave (2008; IJslandse spaargeldgarantie, met aanvullende Nederlandse garantie); (€ 100.000, waarvan een deel verhaald wordt op IJsland)
Indonesische Overzeese Bank (2008) – Depositogarantiestelsel (€ 40.000 / € 38.000)
Van der Hoop Bankiers (2005) – Collectieve Garantieregeling (€ 20.000)
Amsterdam-American Bank (1982) – Collectieve Garantieregeling
Tilburgsche Hypotheekbank (1981) – Collectieve Garantieregeling
Teixeira de Mattos (bank) (1966) – nog geen garantieregeling
Cyprus
Op Cyprus werd in maart 2013 een speciale eenmalige belasting (crisisheffing) overwogen op spaargeld (zie ook bankrun Cyprus en akkoord over steunpakket Cyprus), die min of meer afbreuk zou doen aan de geest van het depositogarantiestelsel^[22]; de afbakening tussen het risico op verlies van (een deel van) het tegoed (gedekt door de garantie) en het niet-gedekte risico van een onverwachte belasting (zoals deze crisisheffing, die onverwachter is dan de tot nu toe stabiele Nederlandse vermogensrendementsheffing) is niet zo duidelijk. Het plan is door het Cypriotische parlement afgewezen. Het uiteindelijke akkoord respecteert de grens van € 100.000.^[23]
Eurosystem
Het Eurosysteem is het centrale samenwerkingsverband van de Europese Centrale Bank (ECB) en de centrale banken van alle EU-lidstaten die de euro als munt hebben. Het is de officiële instantie die het monetaire beleid bepaalt, de eenheidsmunt beheert en zorgt voor prijs- en financiële stabiliteit binnen de gehele eurozone. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Key ECB interest rates
The Governing Council of the ECB sets the key interest rates for the euro area. These are as follows:
Deposit facility: The rate on the deposit facility, which banks may use to make overnight deposits with the Eurosystem at a pre-set interest rate. The Governing Council decided in March 2024 to continue to steer the monetary policy stance through this rate.
Main refinancing operations: The interest rate on the main refinancing operations. In these operations banks can borrow funds from the ECB against broad collateral on a weekly basis at a pre-determined interest rate. The rate is set above the deposit facility rate.
Marginal lending facility: The rate on the marginal lending facility, which offers overnight credit to banks against broad collateral at a pre-set interest rate. The rate is set above the main refinancing operations rate.
DNB inclusief goud reserve
Digitale euro
Internetbankieren
Witwas/terrorisme bestrijding
Fraudebeleid
Payment systems, like Visa – Mastercard
(public transport paying option)

Question to Google Gemini: what exactly changed about god tier money after the credit crunch

When macroeconomists and monetary mechanics nerds talk about the ultimate, undisputed «god-tier money,» they are talking about central bank reserves.

While the public uses commercial bank deposits (which are just promises to pay), banks themselves can only settle debts with each other using central bank reserves. It is the only money with zero default risk, the only money that can clear interbank balances, and the only money used to transact with the central bank itself.

Before the 2008 credit crunch, this god-tier money was an incredibly scarce, «hot potato» asset. After the credit crunch, the entire structural paradigm flipped upside down.

The mechanics of this transformation changed everything in three major ways:

1. The Death of Scarcity: From «Scarce» to «Abundant» Reserves

Before 2008, the Eurosystem and the Federal Reserve operated on a scarce reserves framework. Central banks intentionally kept the supply of reserves tight. Because reserves were scarce and didn’t earn interest, commercial banks optimized their operations to hold as absolutely little of it as possible, relying heavily on the overnight interbank market to borrow reserves from each other to pass the daily «adding and subtracting» checks.

When the credit crunch hit, banks stopped trusting each other. The interbank lending market completely froze. To prevent a total collapse, central banks stepped in with Quantitative Easing (QE).

Through QE, central banks bought trillions in bonds from the market and paid for them by creating brand new central bank reserves. The system shifted permanently to an abundant reserves framework (often called a «floor system»). Reserves went from a tightly managed trickle to an absolute tidal wave flooding the banking system.

2. The Shift to «Pay-to-Hold» (Interest on Reserves)

Because banks were suddenly drowning in reserves they didn’t explicitly ask for, central banks had to change how they controlled interest rates.

Before the crunch: Central banks steered interest rates by fine-tuning the scarcity of reserves.
After the crunch: With scarcity dead, they had to start paying interest on these excess reserves to prevent interest rates from crashing to zero.

In the Eurozone, this took a wild turn during the post-crunch era when the ECB introduced negative interest rates. For years, banks actually had to pay the ECB a penalty fee to hold their god-tier money. Today, the paradigm has normalized, and the ECB’s Deposit Facility Rate (DFR) is the primary tool used to steer the entire economy. The interest a bank gets on its reserves forms the hard «floor» for all other interest rates in the Eurozone.

3. Post-Crisis Regulation (The Rise of HQLA)

Before the crunch, regulators paid attention to a bank’s capital, but they drastically underestimated liquidity risk—the danger of a bank running out of actual god-tier money during a panic, even if its long-term loans were technically valuable.

Post-crunch regulations (like Basel III) forced a massive shift. Regulators introduced the Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR). This rule legally mandates that banks must hold a massive buffer of High-Quality Liquid Assets (HQLA) that can be converted into cash instantly to survive a 30-day severe stress scenario.

What sits at the very top of the HQLA hierarchy? Central bank reserves.

The Takeaway: Before the credit crunch, god-tier money was a scarce asset that commercial banks treated like a hot potato, holding only what was legally and operationally mandatory. Today, because of central bank interventions and strict post-crisis regulations, banks sit on mountains of it. It has transformed from a scarce operational tool into a highly regulated, abundant shield of systemic survival.