The purpose of this article by legal expert Raymundo Larraín Nesbitt is to raise public awareness on collar clauses as many struggling borrowers in Spain are still being abused by them in 2013 when Spain’s Supreme Court has ruled them out as null and void.
By Raymundo Larraín Nesbitt
Lawyer – Abogado
8th of December 2013
I have been asked to revisit the subject of collar clauses (‘Cláusulas Suelo’, in Spanish) in light of Spain’s recent Supreme Court rulings. When I first wrote on the matter, back in 2009, there was no jurisprudence whatsoever. I felt at the time compelled to write and denounce these mortgage clauses publicly as I regarded them as abusive due to their one-sidedness in favour of lenders. They were an accident waiting to happen. So much so that in my article on 10 Common Abusive Clauses in Spanish Mortgage Loans I gave them the dubious honour of listing them in first place. I should have also added SWAP clauses to it.
Five years on, rulings against them are a daily occurrence that no longer makes the headlines. Spain’s Supreme Court has now established in 2013 a line of uniform jurisprudence on the matter declaring them null and void across the board as from the 9th of May 2013 onwards.
Abusive Clause: Definition
Spanish law requires two conditions are met for a clause to be flagged as abusive:
a) The clause must inflict harm on the consumer, whether financial or of some other nature. The consumer can either be a physical or legal person.
b) The clause must benefit the professional who’s drafted the contract within a business relation. This professional will be either a company or professional acting privately or publicly.
Only a judge can rule if a clause is deemed as abusive. In which case, the clause will be lodged in a special registry of abusive clauses.
Collar Clause: Definition
Is an arrangement in which the maximum limit (ceiling or cap) and/or the minimum limit (floor) in a loan is fixed.
In theory is a financial service that is tagged onto your loan whereby if the interest rate to which the loan is referred to (normally Euribor plus a spread) exceeds a capped amount you are charged only the capped amount (ceiling) saving yourself considerable money i.e. the official interest rate reaches 10% and your collar clause has a ‘ceiling’ set at 7%. You save yourself paying the difference (3%) on hiring this financial service.
Conversely should the interest rate fall too low you are likewise charged a capped amount (floor or ‘suelo’ in Spanish).
Collar clauses clearly fall in the category of an abusive clause for the reasons I explain below.
Insight into Collar Clauses
The idea of collar clauses on paper sounds all good and well.
In practice, they play out very differently. When lenders set out to mis-sell this financial service en masse in 2008 it was clear to anyone who followed the markets that the Euribor had peaked off in October 2008. Therefor benchmark interest rates indexed to loan agreements (chiefly Euribor for over 90% of variable interest mortgage loans) were bound to fall sharply in the ensuing months, not to increase. It is precisely at that moment in which lenders knew for a fact that interest rates would drop sharply that they set out to mis-sell a financial product that could only benefit a consumer if interest rates soared. Lenders and credit institutions merrily set off to mis-sell collar clauses to borrowers at large scaring them with apocalyptic double-digit scenarios. Mark Twain’s quote comes to mind: “A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain”.
Lenders took an unfair advantage over consumers through their superior financial know-how on knowing for a fact that the FED was leading a world-wide concerted strategy, in tandem with all key central banks including the ECB, to lower interest rates and pave the way out of the ongoing recession that started with the US’s subprimes in 2007. The likelihood of a return to double-digit rates was negligible; a chimera at best. Albeit trusting borrowers largely ignored this when they were flogged collar clauses as a panacea by lenders in 2008.
Lenders, on mis-selling this complex financial service to laymen, who were invariably not financially savvy, focussed the sales pitch on interest rates soaring and how much money a borrower saved on average on hiring them over the long-term. Fear always makes an attractive sales proposition.
Lenders were only too keen to conjure nightmarish visions of rising interest rates reminiscent of the eighties and nineties reminding borrowers that 10% interest rates were the historical average in Spain. Over-indebted borrowers, reeling in fear, were all too eager to rush on ahead and hire a collar clause like there was no tomorrow. In other cases these clauses were simply tagged onto mortgage loans unbeknownst to unsuspecting borrowers.
While it’s true that 10% is the historical average for interest rates in Spain this does not take into account the fact that Spain joined the Eurozone. This implied Spain losing its monetary policy in favour of the EU’s ECB. This brought as a result stable, low interest rates for the long-term. So a scenario of a 10% interest rate, so long as Spain remains within the protective mantle of the EU, is far-fetched and non-plausible. But few people care to think on such things, much less on hiring a financial service.
Lenders loaded the dice by drafting clauses where the collar clauses were set with a spread as high as 3 or 4% plus Euribor when the official interest rate was bound to plunge below one per cent (!). When interest rates (so very predictably) fell in the wake of the FED’s new Quantitative Easing monetary policy these clauses started kicking in. Borrowers simply failed to grasp how instead of paying less a month (as they had been repeatedly promised by lenders on flogging these collar clauses) were in fact now being requested to pay increasingly more!
My inbox as a result was deluged by aggravated borrowers over the ensuing months complaining on being overcharged by lenders. They were (mis)led to believe that dropping interest rates would translate to sharp cuts in their monthly repayments on hiring a collar clause. The harsh reality proved stubbornly the opposite. Not only did they not pay less, they ended up paying even more than they reasonably should have.
Additionally lenders worded loan agreements reserving themselves the right to revise and amend the applicable loan rate on a monthly basis (if it benefitted them) or else on an annual basis (it if benefitted the borrower). In other words lenders could swiftly react to any rate change that benefitted them (and so they did) as rates continually dropped to new lows whereas borrowers were only able to do it once a year, on average. As a result lenders were quick as a cheetah to amend applicable rates in loan agreements and slow as a tortoise if it benefitted a borrower. That’s fairly one-sided in my book.
Collar Clauses: Jurisprudence
Spain’s Supreme Court has only recently upheld in 2013, across multiple appeals raised by lenders, the nullity of such clauses i.e. STS 241/2013. The matter is no longer contentious as there is a string of like-minded rulings set by the highest court in the land which sets precedence over legal matters.
As a result Spanish lenders are (in theory) legally forced to remove collar clauses from their loan agreements. In practice, they are not so proactive and often would seem to adopt a complacent attitude overlooking such rulings.
Unlike in the UK, where lenders took an active stance mandatorily setting aside billions of pounds to compensate mis-selling PPI insurance covers, this is not likely to take place in Spain. Although UK lenders offer a (paltry) compensation, private claim companies can get you, on average, triple the amount you are initially offered. In the UK we have witnessed how PPI-claim companies have been setup with the sole purpose of claiming compensation on behalf of borrowers harassing prospective customers day and night with text messages.
Back in Spain, lenders are in no rush to compensate or remove such clauses. At no time are lenders going to volunteer offering borrowers any sort of compensation, unlike their UK counterparts. In practice lenders require that borrowers (or their appointed lawyers) claim proactively compensation and/or have collar clauses removed. Many borrowers, in my experience, were misinformed and remain blissfully unaware – even today – that their loan repayments are subject to a collar clause as they were tagged on by lenders unbeknownst to them as an ancillary non-requested financial service.
And this is precisely where lawyers come in to play; by stepping up to enforce the nullity in mortgage loan agreements or even claim compensation on behalf of customers, where applicable.
Are You a Victim of a Collar Clause?
If you think you may (still) be a victim of a collar clause you should not hesitate to contact your lawyer to revise your mortgage loan agreement. Several rulings declare these as null and void and you should at no time be overpaying as a result of them on monthly loan repayments.
You can of course attempt to cut out a lawyer saving yourself money by contacting a lender on your own, in Spanish of course. Any letters in any language other than Spanish will be binned, as it is logical.
In practice the route of cutting out a law professional seldom works as a borrower lacks the gravitas and leverage of a seasoned lawyer in the eyes of a lender to have a collar clause removed from your contract; much less to claim compensation.
You can arrange a free consultation with a lawyer to see if you are eligible. Once a lawyer determines you qualify (for collar clause removal and/or compensation) you may decide on whether it is worthwhile or not to hire them. You should look at the long-term on making a decision. It is foreseeable that the ECB will hold its interest rates low in the mid-term which in turn translates into the Euribor (not directly under the ECBs control) remaining low for a long period. Which means that you are going to be overpaying a lender for quite some time (years). A lawyer’s low fee amply justifies hiring him to have these cumbersome collar clauses removed. And if you are additionally eligible for compensation, all the better!
Spanish Mortgage Collar Clauses – Conclusion
It is a widespread financial product that was mis-sold by lenders at large in Spain. Unbeknownst to many borrowers, who are now struggling to make ends meet, they may be overpaying Spanish lenders on their monthly (mortgage) repayments when legally they should not. Moreover, they may be even entitled to compensation!
If you think you may be a victim of a collar clause you should contact your lawyer to have it removed from your loan agreement. The money you will save yourself on the long run (in a scenario of low interest rates) clearly offsets a lawyer’s fee. Always worth a shot.
If there is something in life we can safely rely on (besides death and taxes) is lenders’ relentless ‘creativity’ to come up with new exotic financial services to flog us. A sarcastic would write ‘greed’ in lieu of creativity. God forbid!
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” – George Santayana.
Philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist.
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Related articles
- SWAP Clauses: Have You Been a Victim? – March 2010
- Lifetime Loans or Reverse Mortgages in Spain Explained – 21st February 2011
- Advice to Struggling Mortgage Borrowers in Spain – 8th March 2011
- Spanish Mortgage Loans: Beware of Abusive Clauses – 8th January 2012
- Spanish Mortgage Loans: An Overview – 21st February 2012
- Mortgage Collar Clauses Revisited (‘Cláusulas Suelo’) – 8th December 2013
- Bank Repossessions in Spain– 21st February 2014
- Bad Debtor’s List (‘Fichero de Morosos’) – 8th April 2014
- Spanish Creditors Pursuing Debts Abroad – 8th May 2014
- Dación en Pago Explained or How to Hand Back the Keys – 8th December 2014
- European Court of Justice Slams Floor Clauses (‘Cláusulas Suelo’) – 27th December 2016
Please note the information provided in this article is of general interest only and is not to be construed or intended as substitute for professional legal advice. This article may be posted freely in websites or other social media so long as the author is duly credited. Plagiarizing, whether in whole or in part, this article without crediting the author may result in criminal prosecution. VOV.
2013 © Raymundo Larraín Nesbitt. All rights reserved.
