Kreissparkasse: growth even in bad times
Created: 04/19/2022, 07:18
Despite the difficult situation caused by the corona pandemic, Kreissparkasse München Starnberg Ebersberg recorded growth in the most important business areas in 2021.
© Julian Stratenschulte/dpa
Despite the difficult situation caused by the corona pandemic, Kreissparkasse München Starnberg Ebersberg recorded growth in the most important business areas in 2021.
This emerges from the annual balance sheet of the bank.
According to the press report, the customer business volume of the Kreissparkasse, which consists of customer deposits, customer loans and the securities portfolios in customer custody accounts, rose by 11.6 percent (2.8 billion euros) and amounted to around 27 billion euros at the end of 2021
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Customer deposits grew by 4.7 percent to around EUR 11 billion.
Around 90 percent of this is held in customers' accounts as short-term investments.
"In view of the low interest rates, our customers continue to show little interest in investing their money for the long term," explains the CEO of the Kreissparkasse, Andreas Frühschütz.
loan portfolio is growing
Despite the difficult economic conditions caused by the pandemic, the Kreissparkasse recorded significant growth in its loan portfolio by almost eight percent to around ten billion euros in 2021.
This also had a positive effect on the loan rate at the district savings bank, which rose by a further three percentage points to 91 percent.
The lending rate describes the proportion of customer deposits that the district savings bank issues as loans.
"We are doing everything we can to continue to enable investments in the region at a high level and thus to fulfill our public mandate in the best possible way," says Freischütz.
According to the 2021 balance sheet report, the robust developments on the stock exchanges and high customer demand for investment funds and fund savings plans led to a significant increase in customer securities of 35.4 percent.
At the end of the year, the Kreissparkasse was managing a portfolio of six billion euros in its customers' custody accounts.
Commission result increases by ten percent
The interest margin is the most important source of income for the Kreissparkasse.
As a result of the persistent zero and negative interest rates, it fell again last year - by around six million to 167 million euros.
An even sharper decline was cushioned by good growth in the lending business.
The commission result developed positively with an increase of around ten percent to almost 59 million euros, carried by the securities business and real estate brokerage.
The costs for personnel and material expenses have remained at a stable level, partly because investments and modernization measures have been postponed to 2022.
increase reserves
The valuation of the loan portfolio did not result in any charges in 2021.
The participations also did not require any value adjustments.
After allocation to reserves, earnings before taxes were around EUR 44 million, slightly below the previous year's figure of EUR 52 million.
The district savings bank uses the remaining annual result of around 18 million euros after tax payments of around 26 million euros to increase its reserves.
The pandemic has also shown how important digitization is in customer service.
In April 2022, the Kreissparkasse therefore introduced video advice across the board: it is available to all customers in discussions with a personal advisor as a further option - in addition to advice on site or on the phone.
Forecast: phase of low interest rates will continue
Looking to the coming months, Frühschütz explains: "Even if we can be quite satisfied with the result for 2021, the most recent announcements by the supervisory authority to tighten the capital requirements for lending pose major challenges for us.
In addition, the effects of the Ukraine war and the associated distortions on the markets cannot be seriously assessed at the moment.” The district savings bank assumes that the low interest rate phase will continue for the time being, even if the pressure on the ECB is currently increasing, in view of rising inflation rates, the end her ultra-expansive monetary policy.
"Overall, we expect the earnings situation to stabilize at the current level for the current year," concludes the CEO.
social commitment
A total of 1.2 million euros benefited the various initiatives, institutions and associations in the region through donations, sponsorship and the four charitable foundations of the district savings bank.
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