Consumer watchdog DECO is publishing a damning report that shows Portugal’s five principal banks all fail clients looking for solid retirement plans. State bank CGD, along with BPI, Millennium BCP, Novo Banco and Santander Totta all suggested “inadequate” potentially “disastrous” products when approached by a DECO investigator, acting undercover, claims the association – which now questions whether bank staff are “badly informed” – or worse, whether banks themselves have hidden agendas.
It is an issue which DECO says it hopes regulating body Bank of Portugal “pays more attention to”.
The full study is to appear in DECO’s next edition of its Proteste Investe magazine.
In the stories appearing in the press so far, CGD and Millennium are the banks criticised for “indiscriminately trying to sell complex products” while Novo Banco was seen as trying to take a “defensive stance”, offering its clients plans that did not favour long-term saving.
With Santander Totta also criticised for “essentially selling its own campaigns”, BPI was the only one of the big five that came near to getting it right – and even then DECO reports that it “also tried to sell a fund that was not adequate” at all.
In all, DECO approached 50 bank branches, in 10 Portuguese cities, writes Observador.
