Frankfurt / Berlin (dpa) - The corona crisis will accelerate the branch extinction at German banks in the opinion of bank president Martin Zielke.
"After this crisis, we will have many more people who are more open to other access and sales channels. The trend towards digitization, which has been going on for years, will get a big boost," said the Commerzbank boss in his role as President of the Federal Association of German Banks ( BdB) of the German Press Agency. "The number of branches has been declining for years. There will be another acceleration here. The banks will orientate themselves to the needs of customers."
Zielke, who has been BdB President since April 22, emphasized: "There is no banking crisis today - also thanks to the measures that we have implemented since 2009." As a lesson from the financial crisis, financial institutions had, among other things, been obliged to provide thicker capital reserves as a buffer for crises and to detoxify their balance sheets.
"The financial sector is stable," said Zielke, who has headed the partially nationalized Commerzbank since May 1, 2016. "So we shouldn't talk about a banking crisis."
The manager emphasized: "We have banks that are much more stable than before the financial crisis. The strength of banks to deal with such economic fluctuations is much greater than ten years ago. It is absolutely clear that loan loss provisions will increase as a result of the current crisis. But banks know very well what and who they are funding. "
Banks and savings banks are currently in high demand - for example, to bring aid loans from the state development bank KfW to companies whose business has slumped due to the corona pandemic. KfW - and thus the state - bears 80 to 90 percent of the risk for these loans in the event that a borrower cannot repay the money. However, because part of the risk ends up in the banks' balance sheets, the financial institutions take a close look.