The cooperative banks in Ebersberg and Zorneding are merging because of the pressure on the commercial banks.
However, customer service should not suffer as a result.
District - The fine-tuning of the two banks is already working: there is not a minute's difference in time between the two e-mails that arrive at the EZ editorial office on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m.
One from Raiffeisen-Volksbank Ebersberg, the other from Raiffeisenbank Zorneding.
The content: word for word.
The two cooperative banks are aiming for a merger in 2022, they announce.
The supervisory boards had agreed to merger talks.
The result is a heavyweight with a balance sheet total of around 1.5 billion euros, over 40,000 customers and more than 250 employees.
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The Ebersbergers: Bernhard Failer (left) and Christian Weber, board members of Raiffeisen-Volksbank.
© Stefan Rossmann
The Ebersbergers are a few seconds earlier with their mail.
It will probably also be you who will have the say in the union in the future;
This is already evident from the name that was planned after the merger: it will remain with Raiffeisen-Volksbank Ebersberg.
The district townspeople have a higher balance sheet total of around 860 million than the Zornedinger, who may soon be swallowed up, with 570 million euros, as of 2020. Officially, both banks do not comment on who will be wearing their hat in the future, referring to ongoing negotiations.
Merger of the cooperative banks: "Want to remain a full-range supplier"
Bernhard Failer, CEO of the Ebersberger Genossenschaftsbanker, shows that the merger is not a voluntary measure, but rather dictated by the times - even if the press release speaks of “two economically sound banks”.
After all, there are the “megatrends” of digitization and changed customer payment behavior.
The administration also needs more heads in order to meet increased legal and banking supervisory requirements.
"It is a good measure for the district to be an even more efficient house," says the VR Bank boss.
"We want to remain a full-range supplier", he promises with a view to the existing offer for private and business customers from account management to lending business.
The comrades' network of branches
Raiffeisen-Volksbank Ebersberg has so far covered the south around Grafing and Ebersberg.
The Raiffeisenbank Zorneding the west around Kirchseeon and Vaterstetten.
North of the forest there are locations of the VR banks in Erding and Munich-Land.
There is also the Alxing-Brucker Genossenschaftsbank.
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Branch deletions at the commercial banks in the district of Ebersberg
The recent deletions by the largest competitor of the cooperative banks, the Kreissparkasse München Starnberg Ebersberg, show how difficult the state of the commercial banks in the district is now.
The institute has been through its mega-merger for a long time and is now in the process of further thinning out its branch network: In Aßling, Forstinning and Steinhöring, where employees used to look after customers, there are only machines since this year.
The comrades have also sacrificed customer proximity to the red pen, for example the advice offers in the rural communities of Baiern, Egmating, Emmering and Frauenneuharting have been closed.
And a little later, the ATMs were also canceled.
Promise: Neither staff nor consulting branches will be cut
The Ebersberg board member Bernhard Failer made a promise on the phone: "We will neither cut staff nor locations that are occupied by employees." This is confirmed by his director in Zorneding, Oliver Brandhuber.
Conversely, this guarantee does not apply to the other pure self-service branches with ATMs and account statement printers in Pöring (Zorneding municipality), Moosach, Eglharting, Kulbing (Baiern) and Grafing-Bahnhof.
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The Zornedinger: Martin Schottenheim (left) and Oliver Brandhuber, board members of the Raiffeisenbank.
© RB Zorneding
When asked, the bank executives do not deny this and again refer to the ongoing negotiations. “We are still in the area, says Failer, however, and refers to the competition from the Kreissparkasse, which only offered personal advice in Grafing and Ebersberg. “We have a different business model,” says the Zornedinger Brandhuber. With this, the cooperative bank wants to score points against the direct banks from the network even after the merger. Internal talks will be held in the coming days, and the bank mates will promise details of the merger later.
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