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Bankinter will pay unemployment benefits a week early as part of its shock plan to mitigate the impact of COVID-19

The bank will make early payment of this subsidy tomorrow, 3 April, to give liquidity to customers who receive it.

Bankinter has approved a new measure in its efforts to reduce the impact of the coronavirus situation on households’ finances. The bank has decided to pay eligible customers their unemployment benefits early, by Friday, 3 April.

This decision is part of Bankinter’s shock plan to help retail and corporate customers in these difficult times.

Normally, the bank pays these benefits on the 10th of each month; however, it has ordered that this payment be made seven days early in April.  This past March, the bank paid benefits to 15,115 eligible customers.

This measure adds to others already taken by Bankinter as part of its shock plan. Similarly, the bank will pay customers’ pension plans five days early in order to help families in need with their finances.

Last Friday, the Bank announced it would be relaxing requirements for holders of Salary accounts. Accordingly, even if their income fails to amount to 1,000 euros or more, in keeping with this account's requirements, account holders will continue to enjoy their accounts’ perks, such as, in particular, earning interest (of up to 5% AER in the first year and up to 2% AER in the second year), fee exemption, free domestic fund transfers online and fee waivers on credit cards.

Last week, Bankinter also authorised payment holidays on mortgage principal payments for any customer households that could not meet the mortgage moratorium requirements set out in the Royal Decree-Law of extraordinary measures of 17 March. The portion corresponding to the principal will be deducted from monthly mortgage instalments, which could significantly reduce them. This payment holiday may be extended to up to 12 months if necessary.

Beneficiaries of this principal repayment deferral should be unemployed as a result of the current situation or affected by a temporary redundancy scheme or discontinued operations.

Also, to help businesses and sole traders with their finances, the bank has approved measures such as immediately activating the line of guarantees secured by the State, with an initial tranche of 20 billion euros. This comes on top of payment holidays on loans for certain customers or reverse factoring post-financing, in addition to grace periods and term extensions on leases for SMEs and sole traders. It is also giving companies the option of using pre-approved loans (intended for tax and social security payments) for any other purpose, in addition to increasing or reusing unused limits of the ‘multi-line financing’ product, with which all financing needs can be combined into a single credit line.