Next Tuesday, the Volksbank Frankfurt and the Taunus Sparkasse in Sulzbach, Hesse, will present their first jointly operated branch. In some places, the two financial institutions in the area are already cooperating, but now their cooperation is to be rolled out across the entire catchment area. At about 50 locations, Volksbank and Sparkasse in Hessen overlap with their branches.
It is planned that the customers of both banks will in the future only visit one branch in which they are served by employees. According to SPIEGEL information, it is planned to open the community branch on four of five weekdays; On two days, only savings bank customers are looked after personally, on the other two only Volksbank customers. However, basic services such as withdrawing money should be offered continuously for all via vending machines.
The store redesign will be a one-time investment of five million euros. The institutes save each year in the single-digit millions - because branches are closed and because vacancies with branch employees, which are no longer needed elsewhere, should be filled instead of recruiting from the outside for more money.
The concept will make school
The unusual cooperation between the two banks, which are competitors in the fight for private and commercial customers, will make school, far beyond the Taunus district - this is relatively safe. Sparkassen, Volksbanks and private institutions such as Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank all suffer, at least predominantly, from the same phenomena: rising costs, declining earnings and the unwillingness of many customers to personally appear in the branch. Finally, most banking services can be conveniently done by computer or mobile phone.
Germany is still overbanked with 1783 banks and 27,887 branches at the end of 2018. In doing so, the institutes have been rebuilding their branch network in Hessen for years, or trying to come up with new concepts to serve the ever-decreasing number of customers in small shops across all three pillars of the financial industry - private, cooperative banks and savings banks To have the character of a café.
For example, Commerzbank has for some time been focusing on small brick-look city outlets and counters where customers are served. At the same time, at the end of September, the still state-owned bank will most likely announce that it will reduce hundreds of its still 1000 branches.
The same applies to the Deutsche Bank: As reported by the "Wirtschaftswoche", the troubled institute could close another 200 branches. Most recently, Deutsche Bank had 535 branches, 188 were closed in recent years.
The Deutsche Bank subsidiary Postbank still operates 850 of its own branches, but will also have to bleed: According to SPIEGEL information, the management will postpone the planned move in late 2020 Bonn Postbank headquarters in the brand new city district "Neuer Kanzlerplatz", although the leases phased out at the current locations. The new building was supposed to be specifically tailored to the needs of the approximately 3,000 Postbank employees, who have so far been spread over nine buildings in Bonn.
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