Competition watchdog levies EUR 12.6m fine on banking association – Update
Budapest, January 12 (MTI) – The Hungarian competition watchdog GVH has levied a 4 billion forint (EUR 12.6m) fine on the Hungarian Banking Association and a 15 million forint penalty on the International Training Center for Bankers for operating an information cartel.
The GVH said in a statement on Tuesday that the association, together with the training centre, operated a banking database for the past 12 years which led to competition restrictions. The database allowed the banks in Hungary to share confidential strategic information with each other, the office said.
The practice violates both Hungarian and European Union regulations, the statement said.
Banks had up-to-date information on the market, market trends, the performance of their competitors, their business policies and strategies, and they used the information to formulate their own business policies, strategies and product development.
The GVH did not attribute direct responsibility for violating competition rules to banks using the database, as it was the Banking Association that made the decision to set up and maintain the system.
Banks using the database had a combined market share of over 80 percent in Hungary.
The GVH agreed to a request by the association to pay the fine in installments as its membership fees do not cover the total cost of the fine.
The Banking Association finds the decision over its use of the BankAdat services “unacceptable”, it said in a statement.
The GVH’s decision is based on legal and professional misinterpretations and wrong conclusions which ignore the way a competitive market works, the association said, adding that it will try to fight the decision through all legal channels possible at home and abroad. It said that the Hungarian banking sector had created the data service BankAdat in the summer of 2000, in response to a government demand and the service was helped regularly with data submissions by the financial watchdog and was often used by ministries, too. The existence of such databases, which compile aggregated client data on the level of bank portfolios, was approved by a law passed in parliament in 2015, the association insisted.
Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters