The savings bank fund company DekaBank has significantly increased its forecast for the year after a profit surge in the first nine months.
For 2021, an economic result - the company's key profit figure - of at least 700 million euros is expected, Deka announced on Tuesday.
For the first half of the year, Deka had promised a result of a maximum of 560 million euros.
"The dynamic growth in the securities business continues, and we have our risks under control," said CEO Georg Stocker.
The increased demand for securities in view of the low interest rates and record high stock markets drove the commission income, and the fund company was also able to release risk provisioning in the lending and securities business.
In the first nine months of the year, the economic result almost tripled to 625 million euros.
The result from the comparable period before the Corona crisis (nine months 2019: 385 million euros) was also clearly exceeded.
Funds and savings plans in demand
According to Deka, the increased enthusiasm for securities among savers once again provided a tailwind.
In the private customer business, sales increased by almost 90 percent to 18.1 billion euros.
In particular, equity funds, pension funds and real estate funds were in demand.
The savings plans also developed positively: In the first nine months, customers concluded around 830,000 new savings plans - 50 percent more than a year ago.
According to Deka, the total number of contracts is now 6.6 million.
In contrast to private customer business, business with institutional customers collapsed to 5.2 billion euros in the nine-month period from 16.2 billion euros in the same period of the previous year.
Deka had already announced when the balance sheet was presented in April that it had lost an important individual mandate in the second quarter.