Lessons from Sweden: Italy launches the Jak Bank

The world of bank loans is becoming increasingly confused. In a scenario where transferring loans and money from one bank to another is more and more complicated, the Euribor that has gone mad and biased interests, the Jak Bank opens in Italy too. A bank that was born in Denmark, but that grew up and developed in Sweden, that only lends money to its partners and demands hardly no interest.

Marco Danisi is the president of Jak Bank Italia, which is for now a cultural association. When asked about the birth of Jak Bank Italia he explains that the idea “came thanks to a television programme broadcast on Italian TV in May 2008. Watching it we discovered a whole ethical banking world that we were unaware of, a world that exists in Sweden and has been working for 40 years. A group of interested people formed online and we soon created a website that we have recently renewed. Until today we were a virtual association, now we are a fully fledged, ‘real’ association”.

The first Jak Bank was born following  the 1929 Danish economic crisis but it soon grew strong and spread to Sweden,  where it has been operating ever since1965.  The peculiarity of the Jak (Jord Arbejde Kapital, which means “land work capital”) is that it lends money only to its partners, who have to reside in Sweden, and at an interest rate of almost 0%. In Italy’s Jak Bank cultural association, “the objective is not big numbers, rather our aim is to establish a study team that will work on launching Jak Bank Italia in the appropriate juridical form”, explains Mario Danisi. “The response from civil society have been enthusiastic however the real problem is a cultural one: we are so used to making profits on our money in a mostly ‘speculative’ manner, so the concept of saving has changed completely. Once the idea of solidarity and mutualism were understood as mutual aid, typical of the generation of our grandparents. However the future will be gloomy and therefore we will have to change the way we think”.

In Sweden all of the bank’s activities take place outside the financial market as all loans are financed with the savings of the bank’s partners. The tax on loans is about 2.5%, which is used by the bank to cover management and development costs, besides a yearly fee of around 20 euros, depending on the age of the borrower and family size.

The crux of the matter, however, is the “saving points” that substitute bank interest rates that partners receive for each crown saved and deposited on a Jak account. This way the monetary value of loans is equivalent to a stock of accumulated points that are consumed when partners borrow. So, once the loan is paid, the total number of points will equal the amount of saving points that have been consumed and users are entitled to either withdraw their savings or keep them in their Jak account to be used by other partners. When will Jak Bank be operational in Italy? “We don’t know”, explains Franco Fratto, spokesman and founder partner, “but we would like to conclude the viability study by the first semester and launch the new company by 2009”.

Find out more: www.jakbankitalia.it