Despite the historically low interest rates, Germans' financial assets have grown vigorously in recent years.
In the past year, private financial assets increased by almost 7 percent to the record value of almost 7 trillion euros.
This development was not only driven by the recovery on the stock markets following the corona price slide in March 2020, but above all by increased savings.
The economists at DZ Bank expect growth to continue in the current year.
According to their forecast, the financial assets of households in Germany should increase to almost 8 trillion euros by the end of 2022.
Markus Frühauf
Editor in business.
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According to DZ Bank economist Michael Stappel, people will save less than in 2020 thanks to the increasing relaxation of the corona restrictions a current analysis of the top cooperative institute: "All in all, private financial assets should grow as fast as in the previous year to 7.6 trillion euros in 2021." In the coming year, a further increase to almost 8 trillion euros is to be expected.
Forced to save
During the lockdown of the pandemic, households were forced to save. Traveling was not possible, neither were going to bars, restaurants or concerts. At the same time, more and more banks introduced negative interest rates on savings deposits. These pass the negative interest rates of the European Central Bank on to their private customers. As a result, Germans invested more in stocks than ever before.
Nevertheless, according to DZ Bank's observation, there is still an investment jam: While the share of sight deposits and cash in private financial assets was relatively stable at 13 to 14 percent before the financial market crisis, it had risen to 28.5 percent by the end of 2020. At the same time, the Germans would have invested 40.6 billion euros in shares, almost three times as much as the average in previous years. But it was less than a fifth of the amount that flowed into sight deposits and cash.