Volksbank Herford-Mindener Land eG, Geschäftsstelle Eschstraße

The staff on site always have an open ear and helped me with my affairs always great. I can absolutely recommend this branch.

After a complete loss of trust, I ended my relationship with Volksbank Bad Oeynhausen-Herford eG. My family was a customer of the bank for over 30 years. In the Eschstrasse branch in Bünde, our customer advisor has come to three investments for our savings (participation in a closed ship fund, a closed fund for life insurance policies and a private pension insurance) that have performed exceptionally poorly over the years. In addition, brokered an occupational disability insurance, which emerged as the second worst product from a comprehensive test by the magazine Finanztest. In retrospect, it became known from various sources that these investments were very lucrative for the Volksbank due to hidden commission payments and that there was a conflict of interest in the advice. The economy and transparency of the recommended products included thereby doubts that the audit mandate from well-known accounting firms was rejected for one of the closed-end funds. I asked the Volksbank to disclose the minutes of the consultation at that time. The only answer came back that the bank had difficulty giving out documents related to a completed transaction. When asked about the exact commissions and reimbursements that went to the Volksbank for the mediated products, I received the following reply in writing from the Director of Private Banking: "We remain in our legal opinion that there is no obligation to provide information on the amount of commissions paid to our company exists and would therefore like to continue to refrain from doing so. ”At first he had said in a personal conversation that he did not know the exact amount of the commission payments at that time. The Volksbank claimed e.g. also that investors did not incur any losses from the ship fund they brokered from a tax perspective, although it is not possible here to claim losses for tax purposes. The bank does not seem to have understood the main characteristics of the products it sells. She may also simply not care whether this results in severe losses for her customers. In the signature of its e-mails, the bank likes to refer to a test by Focus Money, in which branches of the Volksbank Bad Oeynhausen-Herford eG did well in terms of advisory quality. I can only advise everyone to take a look at the scope of the sample and the details of the test on the Focus Money website and to draw their own conclusions. In any case, it was a wrong decision for us to trust the Volksbank in terms of provision and investment. Already the openly stated costs for custody account administration and trading were impressive in the market comparison and ultimately only increased the losses. Combined with the frequent recommendations for new investments and reallocations, this was again not a disadvantage for the bank. The Volksbank Bad Oeynhausen-Herford eG does not seem to be too bad about it, to covertly collect commissions from the capital of its customers, but then does not have the decency to stand up even for increased demand. The only positive thing was the staff at the counter, who were always very friendly over the years and probably knew little about the behavior of the consultants. I can only recommend all clients to request comprehensive written information about the (kickback) commissions that the bank receives for the investment products they broker and then to decide whether a conflict of interest may arise from them that does not benefit the client suitable product could be decided. Nobody has to repeat our mistakes - if in doubt, preferably in independent sources, such as Inform financial test and take care of the savings yourself.