De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB) has begun paying off 23,000 deceived savers to the bankrupt Amsterdam Commercial Bank (ATB). After a few business days, applicants should be able to access their funds again. You will be paid up to 100,000 euros.

past Friday ATB went bankrupt. This is very exceptional. The last bank to go bankrupt in the Netherlands was DSB Bank in 2009. Even then, the account holders were compensated by other banks, but there was no common fund for banks yet. Since 2016, banks have been putting money aside in case one of them went down. How does this fund work and what happens if a bank is declared bankrupt?

Payment system is closed

ATB is a subsidiary of Russia’s Alpha Bank and some of the owners are Russians and have been sanctioned. This is why the bank is on the sanctions lists of the United States and the United Kingdom. Payment systems software is locked, so that the bank can no longer make payments.

Another problem was that ATB is a savings bank. Customers withdraw money by transferring it to a checking account in another bank. But some of those other banks (operating internationally) have stopped making reservations because of the sanctions.

private bankruptcy

According to the trustees, the bank first tried to find a buyer. that does not work; A potential buyer withdrew. On Friday afternoon, ATB Bank filed a bankruptcy petition with the court with the support of regulator DNB.

“This is a private bankruptcy,” says curator Job van Hove. “Usually a company goes bankrupt because it doesn’t have the money, but that was because there were no operational resources left to make the payments.”

According to the DNB, ATB took measures prior to bankruptcy to ensure no financial storms or other benefits would pass on to the sanctioned Russians. With bankruptcy, the deposit guarantee system came into force.