The savings account received a net deposit of BRL 6.259 billion in December, but the investment accumulated in 2022 a redemption of BRL 103.2 billion, almost double the biggest annual loss ever recorded until then, updated Central Bank figures show. this Thursday (5).
Investment losses in the year occurred amid the increase in interest rates by the Central Bank to control inflation, which contributed to reduce the competitiveness of savings compared to investments in fixed income.
Last year, the SBPE (Brazilian Savings and Loan System) recorded a net withdrawal of R$80.9 billion, while rural savings accumulated a withdrawal of R$22.3 billion. The two values ​​were the highest in the Central Bank series, starting in 1995.
Throughout the year, the BC continued the monetary tightening cycle started in March 2021, when the basic interest rate was at 2%, the lowest level in history. The rate was raised by 4.5 percentage points last year and is currently at 13.75%.
In addition to reducing the availability of household income available for investments, by making credit more expensive and slowing down the economy, the rise in interest rates also directly affects the yield on savings. With the Selic above 8.5% per annum, savings deposits have a fixed yield of 0.5%, or 6.17% per annum, plus the reference rate (TR), which leaves the remuneration lower than other fixed income investments.
In 2021, the president of the Central Bank, Roberto Campos Neto, went so far as to state that the monetary authority was studying changes in the rules for correcting savings, amid concerns about the volume of withdrawals, but stressed that this would have to be done in a slowly and in stages so as not to create a disruption in funding. A good part of the savings resources are obligatorily allocated by financial institutions to real estate financing.
Until then, the largest annual withdrawal in savings had been registered in 2015, when the Selic rate was also high, in the amount of 53.6 billion reais. In 2021, the investment had already suffered a significant loss, of 34.8 billion reais, after registering a record deposit of 125.3 billion reais in the previous year, in a scenario of low interest rates and billionaire payments by the government of emergency aid amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
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