Getin Noble Bank bankruptcy - will there be enough money for the francophiles?

It has happened! The Warsaw District Court has declared Getin Noble Bank S.A. bankrupt. Since 2010, when it was formed through the merger of Getin Bank S.A. and Noble Bank S.A., it has granted thousands of loans indexed to foreign currencies, including the Swiss franc. These once highly profitable financial instruments (inter alia due to the use of the so-called spread), today became one of the main factors in the collapse of the said bank. Thousands of borrowers, who decided to sue and even obtained judgments declaring their contracts invalid and returning overpaid loan instalments, today face another unknown - will the funds from the Getin Noble Bank S.A. bankruptcy estate also be sufficient to satisfy my claims?

Commercial bankruptcy - like the sight of a passing comet

A total of 8 commercial banks have gone bankrupt in Poland since the system transformation. This is therefore a very rare phenomenon. Due to the above, the principles of bankruptcy of banks are decided by special provisions found in separate chapters of such acts as the Banking Law and the Bankruptcy Law. However, in order for a bank to fail, there must be a state of insolvency, which means that the bank has no money to pay its liabilities. This state of affairs is ascertained by means of the bank's closing balance sheet prepared at the end of the reporting period. In the case of Getin Noble Bank S.A., the situation described above was undoubtedly brought about by successive final judgments invalidating ‘franking’ loan agreements and obliging the aforementioned bank to return overpaid instalments to its customers.

Receiver takes it all

When declaring the bankruptcy of Getin Noble Bank S.A. The court appointed a receiver - Marcin Kubiczek, who is already the receiver of another related bank, Idea Bank S.A.. It is his task to collect all the assets of the bankrupt and use the funds to satisfy the bank's claims, including the amounts arising from final court judgments awarding repayment of overpaid instalments to borrowers. This will, of course, be the case if the borrower in question manages to report his claim to the bankruptcy estate. The deadline is 19 August 2023.

Will there be enough money?

Once the claims procedure has been completed and the bankrupt bank's assets have been liquidated, the trustee will have to start satisfying the individual claims. Here, the matter becomes complicated due to the fact that the claims of franking-credit borrowers established by final judgments will not be satisfied first. This is because priority will be given to the claim of the Bank Guarantee Fund for the return of the guarantee of deposits of the bankrupt bank (securing, inter alia , the money accumulated on bank accounts held by Getin Noble Bank S.A.), as well as claims such as employee remuneration or receivables on account of social insurance contributions. Neither will the claims of the franking-franchisees be included in the second category, which, in simple terms, covers the claims of the owners of bank accounts covered by the guarantee protection. The aforementioned group will only be able to have their claims satisfied as a third category (this only applies to the amount to be reimbursed). But also in this category, priority will be given to other types of receivables covered by guarantee protection, receivables from bank account agreements not covered by the disbursement guarantee and interest thereon, before receivables resulting from judgments in cases of loans valorised into foreign currency. Interest on the amount of overpaid loan instalments, on the other hand, will go into the fourth category, i.e. it will only be satisfied once the principal claim itself has been satisfied.

Time will tell...

The fact that the claims of the franking creditors will only be satisfied in the third and fourth tier may not be a good predictor of obtaining satisfaction of their claims. After all, employees' salaries, bank account receivables will constitute a gigantic burden on the bankruptcy estate, which is not a well without a day. However, it should be strongly emphasised that not attempting to file a claim and obtain satisfaction from the mass is a kind of forfeiture of the opportunity to obtain the funds due. Whatever the prognosis, francophiles must use all available means to recover what they have fought for so many years.