The European Central Bank (ECB) has prevailed: On Friday, an extraordinary general meeting of the German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DSGV) will decide on a new security system.

The central component will be an additional security fund of around five billion euros, into which savings banks and Landesbanken are to pay.

A DSGV spokesman was confident on Wednesday: “We are on the right track when it comes to the crucial issues relating to the further development of the common security system.

It is our goal to come to a proper decision in the responsible committees and then to implement it in a timely manner. "

Markus Frühauf

Editor in business.

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This will further strengthen the bank security of the Sparkasse Group. The "Süddeutsche Zeitung" and the "Handelsblatt" had reported about it first. In future, liability among the four large Landesbanken - BayernLB, Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW), Landesbank Hessen-Thuringia (Helaba) and Nord / LB - is to be increased. In financial circles it is assumed that the package that has now been found was developed in coordination with the banking supervisory authority of the ECB and the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin), so that their approval can be expected. Nevertheless, improvements to detailed regulations cannot be ruled out.

The main features of the safety pot were already known weeks ago, now its scaffolding is emerging.

According to this, savings banks and Landesbanken are each to pay 2.6 billion euros into the facility in order to be able to quickly help member institutions in distress.

The savings banks will have to save two billion euros from 2025 to 2032, and they will guarantee the remaining 600 million euros through promises to pay.

In addition, the Landesbanken will primarily be liable to one another with their funds.

This means that if a Landesbank encounters problems, funds will initially flow from the Landesbanken.

If these are not enough, the savings banks have to shoot up.

Skeptical ECB supervisors

The bank security guarantees within the Sparkassen-Gruppe that every bank that gets into trouble is taken care of by the other members. This means that no savings bank or Landesbank customer can lose deposits. The cooperative association of the Volks- und Raiffeisenbanken also builds on the institute protection, which, unlike the deposit protection of the private banks, fully guarantees customer deposits. But the supervisors of the ECB have always been very skeptical of this German system, which is also associated with privileges such as the exemption from capital requirements for loans to member banks.

In particular, the rescue of Nord / LB, which had been stricken by ship loans two years ago, had been made difficult by lengthy negotiations between the twelve regional savings banks.

For the supervisors, the responsibilities in the system consisting of 13 security pots - eleven regional institutions of the savings bank associations, one pot each from the Landesbanks and the state building societies - are too intransparent and complex.

You want faster decision-making processes.

Savings banks have to fill up another pot

By 2024, the 371 savings banks and the five Landesbanken with Saar LB also have to fill up the pot for the legally guaranteed deposits.

This is about customer funds up to the legally guaranteed limit of 100,000 euros.

At the end of 2020, the covered deposits in the Sparkassen Group amounted to 793 billion euros, of which four billion euros were covered by the security fund.

A good 2.3 billion euros are still missing to achieve the required rate of 0.8 percent.

Since deposits rose by leaps and bounds during the Corona crisis, more may have to be paid in.

Waiting for the super-Landesbank

In the Sparkassen-Gruppe, the discussion about a super-Landesbank continues to smolder. A few days ago, the President of the East German Savings Banks Association, Michael Ermrich, spoke out in an interview with the Bloomberg news agency in favor of the independence of DekaBank, which is responsible for the fund and securities business. Their negotiations with Helaba about a merger have been put on hold during the Corona crisis. For Ermrich, the main priority at a central institute is to end the duplication of work by the Landesbanks. For him, however, there is hardly any overlap with DekaBank's capital market business.

A few weeks ago, Helaba and LBBW decided to pool their business for Sparkassen. The President of the DSGV, Helmut Schleweis, has now announced that he considers strengthening cooperation within the group to be one of the most important goals. The general market conditions that had been in place for years made it necessary to achieve more standardization and thus more efficiency. “We are working together to tweak a lot of the screws and optimize our processes.” Of course, this also applies to the closer cooperation among the Landesbanken. “I still think a central institute is right. But that will be the result of a process and not the first step, ”Schleweis explained.