ECB governing council member, Benoit Coeure, hits back at financial institutions

  • Says banks should rather focus on costs instead
  • Doesn't see any monetary policy reason for tiered interest rates
  • But says that need to watch this issue closely

And the debate rages on. For some context, regional banks have been calling for the ECB to ease up on negative rates because it is eating into their bottom line i.e. profitability. That has led to the discussion of rate tiering as we have seen over the past few weeks.

So far, it seems like the ECB is willing to entertain the idea but they aren't emphatically backing such a move to be implemented in the near future.