Those who had the opportunities to read the main points of the case reported in CASE HISTORY and GLOSSARY chapters, could  realize that the illegitimate anatocism of the quarterly interests payable applied by the banks is only the “tip of the iceberg” of the various hypotheses of invalid clauses which generally afflict the majority of the current account contracts established between account-holders and the bank.

In order to understand whether you are concerned

Stated that the financial impact of the contract invalidities and of the anomalies of the bank current account relation undertaken in the last ten years (such is the period of prescription) is financially more significant when the current account has remained in debt for long it is clear that a possible action of claiming back will be convenient for the following categories of subjects.

a)     individual people who have had substantial current account overdrafts;

b)     Administrators/Liquidators/Official Receivers for companies whose bankruptcy has already been declared settled or companies declared insolvent in the last 10 years;

c)      Guarantors of subjects who undertake or have undertaken in the last ten years (or less) bank current account relations resulting in a debit balance which such guarantors have been required (for example by means of injunction) or which they presume they might be required;

d)     Administrators of companies which have undertaken or undertake relations of creditworthiness and bank overdraft with banks which do no respect the legal rules of interests and costs charges;

e)     Individual people and/or corporate bodies subjected to movable or immovable executive procedures whose capital required from the banks has not been computed in the strict respect of the regulations.

f)        Every subject to whom they computed and charged minor advance tax deductions for interest (earned) wrongly calculated due to the excess of liabilities charged illegitimately.

How to operate:

In order to understand the real financial/juridical situation of which every single subject potentially concerned must be aware before evaluating the legality and the convenience of an action against a bank, either of restitution or of re-negotiation, of the exact situation in which he finds himself.

Such analysis must develop under the documental profile, by analyzing:

1)     original contract copy of current account

2)     original contract copy of credit opening

3)     copy of the original conventions on the determination of the ultra legal rate

4)     maximum overdraft bank charges and currency days

5)     copy of the contracts and of the conventions following the original ones, (only the ones duly underwritten)

6)     quarterly statements of account received in the last ten years, (or less if the contract has lasted for a shorter time). Such situation refers also to closed relations undertaken with a bank (for example from 1994 to 1996)

We should say that if for the companies and in general for the subjects who are supposed to respect the principles of ordinary accounts this is certainly not a problem, as they are subjects obliged by law to keep all the documentation, the problem might arise for guarantors, private subjects, artisans, one-man businesses, who are not used to keeping with method and for such a long time the above mentioned documentation.