25.05.2022
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Court dismissed class action of a group of CHF borrowers
Yesterday, the District Court in Warsaw dismissed the action of a group of borrowers against Bank Millennium S.A. to determine the Bank's liability for unjust enrichment in connection with mortgage loan agreements indexed to the Swiss franc. In the group action the group members did not claim payment of specific amounts. The number of loan agreements covered by this procedure is more than 3,200. The lawsuit was brought in 2014 by a group of borrowers represented by the Municipal Consumer Ombudsman in Olsztyn. According to the members of the group, mortgage loan agreements indexed to the Swiss franc contained so-called abusive clauses. The members of the group therefore demanded recognition that the contracts concluded by them should be treated as if the loan was granted in Polish zloty, without indexation to the Swiss franc, but at the same time it was remunerated at the LIBOR interest rate, as for indexed loans.
In yesterday’s decision, the Court also corrected the list of group members subject to group proceedings.
The verdict was delivered in closed session, without the participation of the public. The judgment is not final, and the parties may appeal against it.
Yesterday's decision is in line with the position of the Bank, which from the beginning of the proceedings pointed to the unjustifiable claims of this group of CHF borrowers. Regardless of this, in order to meet the expectations of CHF borrowers, the Bank offered and continues to offer CHF borrowers, including those remaining in court disputes (individual or class action) with the Bank, the possibility of concluding an agreement on early repayment or currency conversion of a loan indexed to the Swiss franc in negotiated terms. A good illustration of this effort is shown by the fact that the number of agreements concluded with borrowers covered by the group action as until now is 293, i.e. 9% of the total number of mortgage loan agreements covered by the group action.
At the same time, the Bank continues to be open to its customers in order to reach amicable solutions (i.a. conversions to PLN mortgages, pre-payments, early repayments or collectively ‘amicable settlements’) regarding FX-mortgages on negotiated terms. As a result of these negotiations and other natural drivers, the number of active FX-mortgage loans decreased by nearly 2,700 year to end of March 2022 (2021 overall: nearly 10,300 agreements, 2020: nearly 3,600 agreements), compared to nearly 47,600 active loans agreements at the end of 2021. Similarly to recent quarters, the reduction of the number of active FX-mortgage loans in 1Q22 was higher than the inflow of new individual court cases against the Bank.