商业银行客户保证金账户抵押的法律风险及其控制

The Legal Risk and Its Control of Escrow Account in Commercial Banks

在现有的监管指标体系下,基于对信贷资产风险控制的重视,大多数商业银行都会在贷款协议中采用"保证金账户抵押"的方式作为银行信贷资产风险的控制手段。银行方面认为这种保证金账户抵押方式一来可以为借款人的借款信用提供背书保证,二来有助于帮助提升贷款银行(其同时作为保证金开户行)的存款,由此享受"鱼"(贷款增加)和"熊掌"(存款增量)兼得的双重好处。然而,由于此等保证金账户及账户内的存款之所有权仍归属于客户,客户以保证金账户内的金额提供担保的方式并不属于《担保法》和《物权法》范围内的法定担保,并且在实践中已经发生因借款人与其他第三方的纠纷而导致人民法院查扣和强制划拨"已被抵押的存款"的事例。因此,正确理解商业银行客户保证金账户抵押的法律属性,合理地将商业银行在采用客户保证金账户抵押时的法律风险降为最少乃为本文之要义。

Under the current regulation system,considering the importance of risk control of credit assets,most Chinese commercial banks prefer to take Escrow Account as one of their risk management measures.Commercial banks see two advantages of Escrow Account: one is to raise the credit level of the borrower for its facility,and another is to increase the deposit in the loan bank(which also grants the facility to the borrower),enabling commercial banks to benefit both from increased loans and incremental deposits.However,as the money deposited in the Escrow Account still belongs to the borrower and furthermore that such Escrow Account has not been acknowledged by the Guarantee Law and Property Law,there are many disputes happening when Peoples' Court request the depositing bank to transfer the money of Escrow Account to other third party under the current Civil Procedure Law in practice.So the key of this article is to explain the legal characteristics of Escrow Account and find a solution to reduce the legal risk of such Escrow Account practice in China.