Banco de Portugal building in Braga
Most instances have to do with commissions and interest being improperly charged to customers.
Banks operating in Portugal were obliged to return R$8.91 million to customers in 2025 due to undue charging of commissions and interestrevealed the Bank of Portugal (BdP) in the Behavioral Supervision Report released this Tuesday. Although the amount is lower than the 22 million euros recorded in 2024, excluding an exceptional case from last year, the amount returned increased.
According to the BdP, more than 70% of the amount refunded in 2024 — around 15.5 million euros — was associated with a single financial institution that applied, for several years, a contractual clause considered illegal by the regulator. Without this specific case, the amount returned would have been R$6.76 million, which means that the R$8.91 million in 2025 represents a worsening of the irregularities detected, explains .
The overwhelming majority of returns made this year, totaling 8.24 million euros, are related to fees unduly charged to bank customers. The remaining R$670,000 relates to interest. Among the main infractions identified by the supervisor, the following stand out: irregularities linked to pricingwhich resulted in returns of 4.2 million euros, followed by problems related to the adequacy of financial products (2.11 million) and delays and non-compliance (1.33 million).
The report also shows that Banco de Portugal received 33,375 complaints in 2025, a reduction of 2.3% compared to the previous year. However, only 22,542 of these complaints concerned matters within the banking supervisor’s competence, equivalent to a monthly average of almost 1,900 complaints.
The majority of complaints were filed through the Complaints Book, mainly in electronic format. The topics most contested by customers continue to be related to bank accounts, highlighting the strong increase in complaints regarding account blocking, which grew 54.9% compared to 2024.
Banco de Portugal also expresses concern about the rise in complaints related fraud in payment transactions. In 2025, 2577 complaints were registered regarding allegedly fraudulent transfers and the responsibility of banks to reimburse these amounts, an increase of 45% compared to the previous year.
Within the scope of supervision, the BdP issued 126 warnings423 recommendations and more than 3200 specific orders addressed to financial institutions, in addition to 52 proposals to initiate administrative offense proceedings.
